Awakenings
by Auroura
Summary: When Shinji Ikari met the strange teens with mysterious Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor that he'd be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened.
1. Prologue

Title: Awakenings  
>CharactersPairing: Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
>Rating: PG<br>Summary: Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
>AN: Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p>.<p>

**Awakenings**  
><strong>~Prologue~<strong>

**.**

It was midday, and the sun was shining brightly overhead the small island. A redheaded girl was meandering along the beach, humming softly to herself as she looked for shells and bits of sea-glass. Seeing a glint off the edge of the water some yards away, she walked over, eager to inspect what promised to be an interesting find. To her surprise, however, the object in question was a message rolled up inside a bottle, a wax design of three intersecting circles sealing the paper shut. If she tilted her head the right way, the design almost looked like something with… large, round ears.

Gasping in recognition, she ran over to the other side of the island, gripping the bottle tightly in her hand, to where two boys were resting near a tropical tree. They were having some sort of conversation, and the shorter, brunet boy was smiling up at something the taller, silver-haired boy had said.

"Sora! Riku!" the girl called, running up to them. They looked towards her immediately, and their eyes widened as they saw the bottle with the message inside. Handing the bottle to the brunet boy, she looked over his shoulder as he quickly uncorked it, shaking out and unrolling the parchment, the silver-haired boy on his other side. The letter was indeed from the King, as it had his signature at the bottom, but it was the contents of the letter that were truly shocking. Looking at the King's letter, the three teens tried to comprehend exactly what it was saying.

"An ocean full of hearts..." the brunet boy wondered aloud, his mouth still slightly agape, "…and the Awakened. What could this all mean?"

"It means we have to make things right again," the girl replied, a solemn, somewhat sad note in her voice. It was painful, to know that there were so many hearts no longer in their proper places. The boys nodded at this statement.

"But how do _we_ fit in to…" he started again, before falling silent for a moment, and then seeming to answer his own question right after. "Oh, right, Roxas and Naminé." He looked at the girl briefly, and she smiled in acknowledgement.

"It's not going to be easy," the silver-haired boy said, frowning slightly. "Based on what was in the letter, we're not the only ones who're interested in this Ocean of Hearts." The brunet boy made an exasperated noise.

"You forgot the most important thing," he responded, a grin creeping onto his face. "We're unstoppable as long as we're together!" The other two teens couldn't help but smile.

"True," the girl said, letting out a brief giggle before calming down and focusing her energy once more on the letter. "And when we _do_ find those other Keybearers the King talked about, we'll have more people working together, to help fix this."

"It's settled then!" The brunet declared. "We meet the King in Radiant Garden, and then we go out and find the new Keybearers and the Awakened." This statement seemed to ignite all three of the teens, and they quickly began a discussion of their immediate plans; one mentioned spending the rest of the day getting their ship ready, another talked about the supplies they would need to acquire for the larger journey to follow, and the third mentioned writing a brief letter to her parents so that they wouldn't worry in excess. There were so many things to do all of a sudden, and so very little time in which to get them done.

.~*~*~.

Things in Radiant Garden were as peaceful as could be expected. The town area had been expanded since their last visit, and the castle had been in the process of being cleaned up one room at a time, but the reappearance of the Heartless in the areas surrounding the castle had halted that. The Restoration Committee was doing its best to keep the creatures at bay, but there was an undercurrent of uneasiness present that worried the three teens.

Seeing the teens wandering about Radiant Garden seemed to reassure the townspeople somewhat, but the three visitors only stopped to buy a few basic supplies before heading into one of the houses in the borough nearest the once-again-abandoned castle. Mere minutes later, they exited the house quickly and headed straight for the old castle. When they saw the Heartless, their faces quickly turned serious.

"It's just like they said, isn't it?" the redheaded girl said, concern clear in her eyes. "Everyone's worked so _hard_ to get rid of the Heartless, and now they're back all of a sudden."

"We need to get this situation fixed as soon as possible," the taller boy said, mouth set in a firm line as he gazed at the castle.

"And we need to find those other Keybearers even faster," the brunet boy agreed, then turned to the girl. "Are you sure you'll be able to lead us to where they are?" he asked her.

"I'm not exactly sure how it works," she replied, "but I'm positive the King knows what he's talking about."

"I wonder why he had to leave so soon…" The taller boy speculated, "We only got to talk to him for a minute or two."

"There is nothing that precious King of yours can tell you that will help you," a voice behind the three teens called. Whipping around to see the source of the comment, the teens saw a young man with shoulder-length, silvery hair, covered head to toe in black leather and smiling like a contented cat who had just found three _very_ delicious mice. "Very soon, this world and all the other worlds in existence will belong to Mother. You'd be wise to stop now, or you will be very sorry."

"Who are you?" the brunet boy demanded, pulling out his weapon from thin air and sliding smoothly into a battle stance, his two companions mimicking his actions. "What are you planning?" The man smiled wider.

"You'll see," he replied, eyes full of amusement, and disappeared into a swirling, black portal.

"At least we have some idea of who's behind this," the taller boy said, as his weapon also seemed to disappear back to wherever it was he kept it.

"Don't worry," the girl reassured him, putting a hand on his arm. "We'll get to the bottom of this in no time." The boy let out a deep breath, and visibly relaxed.

"Yeah,'' the brunet boy added, determined. "We just have to go get the new Keybearers on…" he paused thoughtfully and looked up at the other boy, "what was the name of the world again?"

"It was Tokyo-3," the taller boy replied, a small smile creeping up on his face. "You're _impossible_ sometimes, you know that, right?"

"_You're_ the one that's impossible," the brunet retorted, attempting to pout for effect, but evidently failing as a large grin quickly took its place. He looked around the area once, then back at his two companions and nodded firmly. "Alright, let's go to Tokyo-3."


	2. Chapter 1

Title: Awakenings  
>CharactersPairing: Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, Riku, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
>Rating: PG<br>Summary: Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
>AN: Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Chapter 1~**

**.**

The boy known as Ikari Shinji was sitting on the sand, his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning slightly back with his weight on his hands. He was staring out at the ocean, the only sounds of the world being the orange waves lapping quietly on the shore. Beside him, Asuka was laying down, seemingly asleep with her eyes closed and coppery hair fanned out around her head. It was always a little strange seeing her like this, compared to when he'd shared an apartment with her and Misato-san in the now-empty city; she was always so quiet now, and even when she was awake, she would barely talk to him. Shinji frowned at the thought, but… it was only a natural response, after all that'd happened. He contemplated falling asleep as well, as much to take his mind off of things as the lack of much else to do other than look at the memorials he had made or forage for more edible plants. But just as he was about to lay down, he heard a distant noise from the other side of the rocks.

"I thought you said there would be people here, Kairi."

"They've _got_ to be here, Riku, we just haven't found them yet." Were those voices Shinji was hearing, or was it just another wishful dream that he and Asuka were not alone anymore?

"This place is empty, you guys. I don't think anyone's here." They were voices that he was hearing.

"Oh, not you, too, Sora. Look, I just know that someone's here, okay? Just trust me on this." And the voices seemed to be getting closer! Shinji turned his head towards the rocks just in time to see three teens climbing over them, the first a redheaded girl in a short, pink dress. She was followed by a spiky-haired brunet boy in an unzipped hooded jacket and black shorts with many belts, and a taller, silver-haired boy in a vest and jeans.

The girl and boys seemed as shocked to see Shinji as he was to see them, but the girl quickly recovered and began running towards him. Startled by her sudden movement, Shinji scrambled backwards and to his feet, accidentally bumping against Asuka in the process, waking her roughly as he stood on the uneven sand.

"W-who are you?" Shinji asked the girl, unable to keep the shaking out of his voice, fists clenched awkwardly at his sides. He saw Asuka stand up beside him in his periphery, but didn't keep his eyes off the three strangers, the two boys having caught up to the girl and standing on either side of her.

"Hello, Shinji, Asuka," she said, an easy smile on her face. "My name is-"

"How do you know our names?" Asuka interrupted, blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Where are you from? You don't look like you're from around here, and no one else has ever come out of the ocean." Shinji did a double-take; after so many days of barely speaking or even acknowledging his presence, the appearance of these strangers seemed to light a spark in her that Shinji wasn't sure he'd ever see again. The strange girl seemed somewhat taken aback by this as well, though that was probably due to Asuka's rudeness. The brunet boy, however, quickly filled the silence.

"We're from another world," he said happily, blue eyes wide and cheerful.

"Another world?" Shinji repeated. The boy nodded, and Shinji heard Asuka curse softly in German beside him. The only other beings to come from outside the Earth had been-

"We're human," the taller, silver-haired boy said abruptly, as if anticipating his question, though he didn't necessarily answer as nicely as the other two. "We're not Heartless, don't worry." Shinji wanted to turn away from his sharp tone, but couldn't bring himself to drag his eyes away from the pale curtain of hair that fell past his shoulders. The boy met his eyes, catching Shinji staring at his hair with an intense aquamarine gaze, and Shinji finally looked away, letting his fists unclench.

"Heartless are creatures born from the darkness in a person's heart," the brunet boy said, expression now more serious. "The three of us travel to different worlds, fighting the Heartless using our Keyblades. I'm Sora," he continued, "this is Kairi," he gestured to the girl, "and he's Riku," he jerked his head towards the other boy.

"The… darkness?" Shinji echoed, gaze wandering back towards the boy called Riku. His hair was so light, that same seemingly impossible color he'd only seen once before, and Shinji felt a strange ache at the thought of the other person he'd known with hair like that. Riku seemed to tense slightly at the attention.

"On this world," the girl, Kairi, said, "the Heartless were called Angels." Shinji dragged his eyes back towards her. Had these three also fought Angels, calling them Heartless? "The three of us were specially chosen by the Keyblades to fight the Heartless and free hearts that were trapped in darkness. You see," and here she hesitated for a moment, "the two of you were also specially chosen to fight, which means you also have the power to wield the Keyblade."

"We came here to tell you," the spiky-haired Sora continued, "so that you can help us fight the Heartless and restore the hearts." They were asking him and Asuka to fight.

"You want us to fight Angels for you again," Asuka said swiftly, thoughts evidently coming to the same conclusions as Shinji's, though her expression was guarded slightly.

"They're called Heartless," Sora corrected. Shinji felt his hands forming into fists again.

"The EVAs are gone," Asuka said, still guarded, but not as against the idea as Shinji thought she'd be. He knew how much she hated the Angels, but he hadn't seen her look so alive since… before.

"Those EVAs of yours," Kairi replied calmly, "they were conduits for your hearts, what you called A.T. Fields. Once you summon your Keyblades, you will be able to use your hearts to fight the Heartless again." Shinji willed himself to not shake, but could not prevent himself from speaking.

"We don't _want_ to fight again," he said, gazing at a patch of sand. "We're done with all of that."

"But you have to," Riku said. Shinji looked up at him and saw that he was blinking, puzzled.

"No," Shinji responded. "There are three of you; you don't need us." Riku's eyes narrowed, framed by his silver, silver bangs.

"You don't have a _choice_," Riku said, voice hard. "You have to come with us." Shinji just continued looking at him. "It's rude to stare." Shinji blinked, and Riku's annoyed face came into focus.

"You remind me of someone," Shinji said quietly, looking away again. "Someone who's gone because of the EVAs." He heard Asuka inhale sharply, but ignored her. "Asuka and I are the only EVA pilots still alive, and everyone else in the world is gone or a part of the ocean." Glancing at the three newcomers, he saw Kairi begin to frown.

"We didn't mean to upset you, but Riku's right," Kairi said sadly, then glanced at the ocean briefly. "I guess it's true, then, that everyone's hearts are in this ocean."

"But that's why we're here," Sora, pressed, seemingly unwilling to give up. "If you come with us, you can help us put the hearts in the ocean back to normal." There were a few short seconds of silence.

"…Wait a minute," Asuka accused. "You didn't say that before." She kept glancing at Shinji, but he was determinedly staring out at the ocean now. Were everyone's hearts really in that orange sea? And was it actually possible to turn everyone back to normal? But what if the really important ones weren't there? Would he have to fight again, only to be let down? Did he really-

"You are wrong," a strange, deep voice called out from the far end of the beach. Whipping around, Shinji was met with the sight of a large, burly man with short, silver hair that stuck out behind him. He was dressed entirely in black leather, and Shinji's eye was drawn to the metal claw on the back of one of that man's hands and the wicked smile on his face. "This Ocean of Hearts, this Kingdom Hearts, belongs to us and to Mother."

…Mother?

"Hey!" Sora called back, crouching into an aggressive posture as a giant key materialized out of nowhere into his hands. Was this what a Keyblade was? And who was that man? "Who are you, anyway? If you think we're going to let you control the hearts, you're wrong." This seemed to anger the man, who, with a gesture, created four large, black pools in the ground. The pools shone like deep, oily slicks on the surface of the sand, and Shinji felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in an urgent warning.

"I am Loz," the man said. "If you get in the way of my brothers and I, or of Mother," he growled, face twisted in a scowl, "you will pay the price – with your hearts." Out of the black pools came a multitude of glowing, yellow lights that Shinji realized, with a sinking sense of horror, were eyes. As the eyes rose out of the darkness, he could see the small, black bodies around them, complete with a twitching pair of antennae each. Soon, enough of the creatures had amassed that they easily covered the side of the beach the man was standing on.

"We won't ever let the Heartless take our hearts!" Kairi said, pulling out her own giant key from thin air, which, with its flower and waterfall motif, looked like a garden in paradise. At the same time, Riku drew his own – there were no other words, he just _knew_ – Keyblade, which seemed like the complete blending of light and dark itself, pure white feathers directly beside deep maroon bat wings. Bristling again, the man now known as Loz threw his arm to the side as another swirling, dark portal opened up in the air.

"You'll obey Mother's wishes and stay out of our way if you know what's good for you," he said, stepping into the portal and leaving the rest of them with the small creatures with the glowing eyes.

"Aw man," Sora sighed, somewhat resigned. "Why can't things ever be _easy_, for once?" The creatures began to move closer towards them, small feet shuffling and clawlike hands reaching at them, sometimes melting into puddles and sliding along the ground.

"What _are_ those things?" Asuka asked, disgust heavy in her voice.

"Heartless," Riku responded, grimacing. "Mostly Shadows and some Neoshadows, but there's a lot of them." Now that Shinji's attention had been drawn to them, he could see that some of the creatures – Heartless, he reminded himself – were slightly larger, with larger claws, jagged antennae, and sleeker lines. "You should call your Keyblades now," Riku said.

"Are you really sure we can fight them?" Shinji questioned, backing slowly away as a group of the Heartless moved closer towards him. In his periphery, he could see Sora and Kairi each fighting groups of Heartless on their own.

"The Keyblades will defeat them," Riku said, strained, attention divided between his own group of foes and Shinji. "Call them, now!" he shouted suddenly, alarmed and running towards Shinji and Asuka. Asuka yelled, and Shinji turned to see one of the larger Heartless leaping towards him, claws extended. Bringing his arms in front of himself to shield his face, he saw a bright flash of light. Eyes snapping closed, he waited for the blow to fall.

When the pain did not come, nor any other sound at all, Shinji slowly moved his hands away from his face. Cracking one eye open hesitantly and finding the beach completely gone, he quickly opened the other one in order to inspect his new surroundings. He was nowhere _near_ the beach, that was for sure; an empty blackness stretched all around, and under his feet, the floor was a massive, round panel of stained glass.


	3. Chapter 2

**Title:** Awakenings  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PGish  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, **wayya** and **cozzybob**. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**  
><strong>~Chapter 2~<strong>

**.**

Shinji was amazed by the sight of his new surroundings. Where had the beach gone, where was he now, and why were there pictures of people in _glass_ on the floor? He recognized one of the people as Sora, which was strange enough in itself, but the person facing Sora was some blond boy who Shinji had never seen before, though he did bear a strong resemblance to Sora. Images of crowns and ice cream bars framed the two boys, the background as a whole was a deep, rich blue. But just as he was contemplating this, he was interrupted by something much more bizarre.

Simultaneously, three objects appeared in front of Shinji; a sword, a shield, and a staff. He didn't know how, but he knew that he had to choose one of them. Which one would help him the most, though? He didn't _want_ to fight, but if what happened on the beach was any indication, he would _need_ a weapon to fight off the… Heartless. The sword it was, then. He felt its strength, but it disappeared as he grasped it. Now what?

**Now you have to choose which of the others to give up,** a disembodied voice said. Of course; nothing was truly free, here. The voice seemed to be many people and no one all at once, and Shinji couldn't tell from which direction the sound had come. Deciding to not worry about where the voice came from for the time being, he looked once more at the shield and the staff. Which would he choose to give up?

Shinji honestly had _no_ idea what the staff would be for, but he knew that defense was just as important as offense, and had learned when fighting the Angels just how valuable a shield could be. He would give up the staff, then, and was just about to tell the voice his decision, but it vanished into thin air, the second he opened his mouth. At the same time, a warmth filled him, and a weight settled into his right hand.

Looking down, Shinji was amazed that he didn't drop what had appeared in his grip. About the length of his arm, with a shaft that looked like a striped, green cord and blood-red… teeth surrounded by a deep purple _mouth_. The black grip, surrounded by a simple purple set of guards, felt light in his hand, and _was that his old SDAT music player dangling at the end of the short, silver chain?_

It was his EVA.

No, it was a Keyblade; that was the word that Sora, Riku, and Kairi had used, the word that the voice kept whispering as he held it. But it _looked_ exactly like EVA-01 would, if it were a… a _Keyblade_. Which this apparently was. He knew instinctively that its name was Hedgehog's Dilemma, and Shinji didn't think he really knew what that meant, but it was his Keyblade, and he could fight with it.

There was a flare of light out of the corner of Shinji's eye, and as he turned, he saw a large, ornate, rose-colored door ornamented with gold filigree appear out of thin air.

**Be careful**, the voice said.

**Beyond that door lies a completely different world.** A different _world? _Shinji tightened his grip on Hedgehog's Dilemma. **But don't be afraid.**

**Don't stop walking...**

Seeing as there was nowhere else he could go, Shinji pulled the door open and walked through.

At first, it didn't seem as if he had gone anywhere at all, but looking down, Shinji saw that the image in the floor had changed. Instead of Sora and the unknown boy, the stained glass now showed a picture of Kairi and a blonde girl in a white dress. Facing each other with eyes closed, each of the girls held a star-shaped object in her hands, and Kairi's necklace, lifted into the glass air between them, glowed with a bright, calming light. Surrounding the girls were colored pencils in many different shades of pastel, all on a pale pink background.

But the light was not to stay like that for very long. Moving in quickly from outside the circle of stained glass, a small, black puddle slid across, stopping in the center to reveal a small, black Heartless emerging up, short antennae twitching every which way but yellow eyes glowing dully and fixed right on Shinji.

Thinking of Hedgehog's Dilemma as the Heartless ambled single-mindedly toward him, he felt the Keyblade once again solidify into his hand. The Shadow moved to swipe at him with a clawed hand, but Shinji swung and felt it connect, driving the small body back a few paces. For a second, the Heartless appeared to be stunned, but it shook the hit off and attempted to attack Shinji again, this time with slightly more force. Swinging again, Shinji managed to hit it, but didn't stop to see how much damage he did this time. He followed the first hit with two more successive swings, and as he swung for the third time, he felt the momentum catch up with the Keyblade and let out a more powerful, final strike as the Heartless disappeared into a puff of black smoke.

_So things are more powerful in threes_, Shinji thought. But even as the notion occurred to him, three more puddles moved onto the glass and formed into three twitching, shuffling Shadows. _It doesn't look like it's always in my favor, though._ It also didn't seem right, somehow, to see the little dark bodies standing anywhere near a picture of Kairi or the blonde girl, and those yellow eyes made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably.

Still, there wasn't anything he could do besides attack these new creatures just like he had the old one. Trying to keep the idea of sets of threes in his head, he hit and swung, and even tried stabbing until all the Heartless were gone, the dark smoke drifting away and out of sight. When the last one had disappeared, another door appeared in a flash of light, along with a small red-gold chest. Walking over to the little chest, he opened it to find a small glass bottle filled with a bright green liquid.

**A magic Potion,** the voice said. **When you suffer from the claws of an enemy, it will cleanse your wounds and restore your health. **He'd have to save it, then, and maybe ask Sora, Riku, or Kairi how to best use it. Sticking the bottle in one of his pants pockets and hoping it wouldn't break in what seemed like inevitable future battles, he turned and walked through the second door.

After first looking around once and seeing no more dark puddles, Shinji looked at the floor once more. This image showed two girls he had never seen before, older than Kairi and with hair in different shades of blonde. The girl with the darker shade had her hair pulled back with a black bow, and was dressed in some type of embroidered suit. She seemed deep in thought, and appeared to be reflecting on the beat-up, stuffed bear she held in her arms. The other girl - whose hair seemed to be mostly slicked back, save two long bangs - was dressed all in black and staring intently at a set of blue cards she held in one hand. The background was a sort of yellow color, with images of lighting and small daggers circling the edge of the portrait.

Shinji was about to step closer to the center of the circle, so as to see the girls' faces in greater detail, but stopped suddenly when he felt that same chill on the back of his neck. Whipping around and concentrating on pulling out his Keyblade, he saw the edge of the platform darken into another of those black pools. It grew and spread, and as he stepped backwards to get away from it, saw the liquid shadow soon cover almost half of the stained glass.

Rising up from the blackness, a giant pair of those dull-glowing eyes was surrounded by a beaked face that was all-too-familiar to Shinji. Large shoulders gave way to thin arms and sharp claws, and in the center of the long body was a hole shaped like a heart. _This_ was what he had to fight now? It was so much larger than the other Heartless he had seen since his encounter with the three strange teens, standing at what seemed like at least thirty feet, and a much more recognizable kind of terrifying than the small, twitching Shadows.

The giant Heartless attacked at once, one inky-black arm rushing down and trying to catch him in its grasp. Jumping out of the way as quickly as he could, Shinji tried to maintain his balance as the monster's hand slammed into the floor, not breaking the glass but sending a tremor outward nonetheless that almost knocked Shinji off his feet. How was he supposed to fight this huge thing? He had to aim for the core, right, or something like it? That was how the Angels had been defeated, and Shinji assumed that was how the Shadows were defeated, too. But there _wasn't_ a core to _this_ Heartless that he could see; there was a giant _hole_ where the core was supposed to be.

As the Heartless pulled its arm back up and shifted its feet, Shinji tried to rack his brain for another strategy. If he couldn't find the core, were there other parts that seemed vulnerable? Turning slightly, feet landing heavily on the ground, the Heartless kept its eyes fixed on Shinji.

_The eyes?_ Well, it was worth a shot, he supposed. But how was he going to reach them when its head was all the way up there, and Shinji was all the way down here? The Heartless's shoulder seemed to bulge and it started to rush down with its other hand, and Shinji jumped out of the way again, just barely missing the claws. In a flash of inspiration, he jumped up _onto_ the Heartless's hand, ran up the length of its arm, and started hitting its head with his Keyblade, trying to aim for the eyes.

He must have started to do some damage because the next thing he knew, the Heartless was letting out a high-pitched scream right into his ear, shuddering and trying to shake him off his perch. Although Shinji tried to keep his balance, one of his feet slipped, and he clutched on with his left hand onto who-knows-what on the thing's shoulder. But the Heartless flexed its arm again, and he fell off, losing grip on his Keyblade in the process and landing awkwardly on the glass floor.

Nothing seemed amiss at first, other than the angry, giant Heartless, but when Shinji tried to stand up again, his leg gave out beneath him. Looking down quickly, he saw the strange angle his ankle was bent at the same time he became conscious of the pain.

_Not good._ What was he going to do with a broken ankle? He called Hedgehog's Dilemma back to his hand, but he didn't see what use it would do. Even if he got out of here alive, he'd be no use to the others injured. _Wait… the Potion!_ Now, he just had to figure out how to use it.

_Well, the bottle looks like something you'd drink out of. _To his great surprise, the bottle was unbroken when he pulled it out of his pocket. _People… drink this stuff all the time… right?_ That green color looked so _disgusting_, but he had no time to waste. Downing it and hoping for the best, he tried to jump one more time, and saw a dark, clawed hand hit the floor once again. Shinji didn't really have any sense of what the Potion tasted like, and he didn't really recall exactly how he got back up the Heartless's arm, but after two more set-of-three hits to the eyes, _threethreethree_, he heard the Heartless scream once more and felt it shudder as it slowly started to collapse in on itself. He jumped off as soon as he thought he was close enough to the ground, backpedaling quickly.

As the giant Heartless writhed on the ground, darkness rising in plumes and tendrils as it slowly faded away, the light from the floor seemed to be in the process of being swallowed up as well. The darkness was flowing out along the floor as the Heartless disintegrated, covering the picture of the two strange girls and rushing to capture Shinji's feet. He tried to lift his legs, but only found himself sinking further and further down.

He began to thrash, panic rising sharply in his chest as the claustrophobia caused his breaths to become shallower, but that only seemed to pull him down even faster, the darkness reaching his waist now and rising every second. But just as he thought he was going to be lost in the darkness forever, he saw two of the palest hands grabbing onto one of his each. From their joined hands, a bright, white light radiated outwards. As the light began to encompass everything, Shinji could have sworn he saw two identical –

The light faded, and Shinji found himself back on the beach, his Keyblade clutched in his right hand. The Heartless who had attacked him earlier was gone, and although another one seemed to be coming closer, when he swung, striking it a few times, he watched it disappear in a puff of darkness. He was about to swing again towards a third, but saw it struck and disappear before his eyes by a red-orange blur. Looking at the source, he found none other than Asuka, her own Keyblade held firmly in her grasp.

"Well, don't just stand there gawking," she said, a pleased smile on her face and a gleam in her eyes that Shinji hadn't seen for a long time. "A little variety never hurt anyone. I've finally found something to hit that isn't you." The only way to describe her weapon was that it looked like EVA-02. The shaft went from red to orange as it traveled outwards, ending in a set of three teeth that looked like white-hot prog knives. On the end of the chain, he could just make out a little red blob swinging that appeared to be one of the synch enhancers Asuka used to wear as hair clips.

Shinji could only make a small noise of protestation, but she had already turned around, weapon slicing at more of the creatures. Riku, who had been ready to intervene the last time Shinji saw him, was now looking at him with something that was almost amusement. Forcing himself to ignore the other boy, Shinji turned and began focusing on attacking another small group of Heartless.

But it soon became apparent that fighting off so many of the dark creatures was easier said than done. Though the Keyblade was a powerful weapon, Shinji and Asuka had very little experience, mostly relying on luck and blunt force rather than any sort of technique. Even Sora, Riku, and Kairi, who seemed to have a much greater skill, were starting to wear down under the sheer number of Heartless that had been called. Attempting to dodge the swipe of a Neoshadow's claws, Shinji merely felt them carve deep gashes in his left arm instead of ripping it from his body. Wincing, Shinji managed to beat it off, but felt his blood drip slowly down his arm.

"We can't stay here much longer," Riku called, hacking his way towards Kairi, even as the rest of them moved closer towards each other in a defensive grouping. "We're too close to the ocean as it is, and we've got two brand-new fighters with us." Shinji barely managed to take this in, trying to concentrate on hitting the Heartless and pretending he wasn't losing any blood, curling his injured arm close to his body.

"We've fought before," he heard Asuka reply testily. "I'm not going to give up just because there are more of them then there are of us." She was moving closer as well, however, and soon came to stand just outside of Shinji's swing range on his right side.

"I have to agree with Riku on this one," Sora said. "I don't like the idea of leaving when there's still Heartless here, but I know what a strategic retreat is." Were they really going to leave? He didn't want to think about his arm or how much it hurt, but if he could manage to defeat that giant Heartless back in the room with the stained glass, why couldn't he fight against these smaller ones? Was there anything he was capable of doing when faced with a vicious enemy other than running away?

"We're already back at the rocks," Riku added, in a preemptive response to whatever he thought Kairi was going to say. She looked like she was about to protest, but stopped once Shinji caught sight of her.

"Shinji, you're hurt!" she exclaimed, looking distressed. "And my magic isn't recharged yet… Sora?" Shinji couldn't see her face, as he was preoccupied with beating off another Shadow.

"I'm out, too, Kairi," he heard Sora call back, tense. Shinji felt the backs of his legs hit the rocks.

"I don't want to _run away_," he said to himself, almost under his breath. He barely swatted away another Heartless, even as he felt the rocks digging into him from behind.

"I'm not letting you guys get hurt," Riku said firmly, though it seemed to Shinji to be directed more towards Sora and Kairi. He swung his Keyblade at a few Heartless violently. "_Sora…_"

"Alright," Sora nodded, herding Shinji over the rocks to the other side as Riku did the same with Kairi and Asuka. Shinji let his fingers trail over the stone as he reluctantly clambered over, ignoring the throbbing pain shooting up his arm. His vision was tunneling rapidly, and he only distantly realized just how shaky and labored his breathing had become.

"I still feel like there's something else here that we should be staying for," he thought he heard Kairi say as they made it over the rocks and down across the other side of the beach. Shinji's vision became blurry, and his legs didn't seem as strong as they had a minute ago. "…don't know," Kairi's voice said distantly, "just something." His legs finally gave out, and his vision went black as Sora reached out to him. For a second, he thought he saw another boy looking at him and catching him as he fell over, that one with the lighter hair from the glass… but all he could think about in those last seconds of consciousness was to wonder whether he'd managed to touch that broken statue on his trip over the rocks.

* * *

><p><strong>End Note:<strong> I _know_ I was supposed to post this over the weekend, but life has a funny way of happening when you least expect it. Sorry for the delay, but I hope you enjoyed :)

There's also a drawing I did over on my LJ (chesauroshin dot livejournal dot com / 105474) of Shinji fighting with his keyblade, so please feel free to go take a look!


	4. Interlude 1: Roast Beef

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. Familiarity with Gundam Wing is not necessary, either, but it helps. I have not been spoiled for BBS, and this entire fic was plotted out before BBS came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Interlude 1 - Roast Beef~**

**.**

Asuka was silent as they boarded the spaceship, Riku and the temporarily-blond Sora carrying Shinji inside, through a small room with a table and charts, and laying him on a bunk bed in what looked like a sleeping berth. Kairi shut the ship's door behind them, then dashed over to where Shinji was, her flowery keyblade still out. As Kairi held her keyblade over Shinji, she started to chant a spell; green light and a pink flower hovered over Shinji's unconscious form. These kids who'd come to the beach… they didn't have any business here.

"He should be okay now," Sora said, hair brown once more. "Kairi will keep him stable until we get to Radiant Garden."

"Radiant Garden?" Asuka asked. Sora nodded, and Asuka figured that was probably the 'world' those three were from. "…Why did your hair change color like that?" The boy looked surprised for a moment, and then the surprise turned to sheepishness.

"That, uh… that happens, sometimes," he replied. Riku snorted. "But it's easier if we wait until Shinji's awake before explaining things." Of course they were still keeping things from her and Shinji.

Her and Shinji… why was she thinking of them being grouped together like that? She _hated_ Shinji.

No, that wasn't completely true. Asuka knew she hated what he'd done, and she knew that she hated how he acted most of the time, but… even after everything, she couldn't manage to hate him completely. Those uncomfortable, girlish feelings she'd had from before were gone and would probably never return, but now they were the only two people from their world who weren't in that stupid, orange ocean. That had to mean something, right?

And they had their EVAs back, even though they were called keyblades now.

"Alright," Kairi said, pulling Asuka out of her thoughts for the time being. "He's stable now, but he's probably going to be recovering unconsciously until we get him to Aerith." The girl's keyblade had been put away now, and she sat down on one of the other beds in the sleeping area with a sigh.

"You should take a break then," Sora replied, and Kairi smiled with a thankful expression. "I'll go finish plotting the course back to Radiant Garden."

"We're not going to warp?" Riku asked.

"Once we get back to the main system, we should be able to," Sora explained, "but I'll have to do it manual until then." Riku nodded, and then Sora walked to what Asuka presumed was the cockpit of the ship. Riku turned to Asuka.

"You should get some rest while you can, too," he said, which annoyed Asuka slightly. That fight might have been tiring, but Asuka didn't need some pretty-boy telling her what to do. She was about to say this, but was swiftly interrupted by her stomach, which made a low growl. "…Or you can follow me to the galley, and I'll find something for you to eat." He shrugged, as if he didn't care either way. Well… it was either get some food or stay in the snoozefest.

"Sure," she said, and she bet she could out-shrug him any day of the week. Riku turned and walked through the door they'd come in through without replying. Not about to let him get the best of her, she followed him through the first room, and then into a smaller room with a refrigerator, freezer, stove, countertop, and a booth with a table. Asuka slid into the booth, and Riku went to open the fridge. After some rummaging, he pulled out a loaf of bread and some lettuce.

"Chicken, roast beef, or tuna salad?" Riku asked. Asuka looked up at him. "We just have sandwich stuff, since we're going to get more supplies in Radiant Garden, but it'll tide you over until then." How long had it been since she'd had real meat? And _bread_. None of those stupid vegetables and strange greens Shinji found.

"…Roast beef," she answered, and Riku promptly went to work on the sandwich.

"Cheese?"

"Yes."

"Mayo?"

"No."

"Mustard?"

"Yes."

"Onions?"

"No." How… domestic of him. After about a minute of silence, in which the only sounds were Riku making the sandwich and the ship's engine, he placed both a picture-perfect roast beef sandwich on whole wheat bread and a glass of apple juice on the table in front of her. After a couple more moments of silence in which he did not move from his place in front of the table, she looked up at him. He was staring at her.

"Anything you feel like saying?" he asked, as if he was expecting a response.

"…Thank you," she said, after a beat. His expression didn't change.

"That wasn't what I meant." Asuka felt the irritation rise up inside her again, but at least he got to the point quickly enough.

"Are you ever going to tell us what's really going on?" She'd got her EVA back, and she'd got on this ship with them, so they owed her an explanation. "Do you really know how to change the ocean back, or are you just saying that so we'll fight with you?"

"We really can change it back," Riku replied, moving back to the countertop to put the sandwich ingredients away again, "if we find the right people." The right people? "It'd be better if we explained it to you and Shinji all at once, but the bottom line is that we need your help to find certain people, and those people will change the ocean back to how it was before."

"How do you know these people are going to agree to do this?"

Riku looked over at her.

"Eat your sandwich, it's good." She picked it up and took a cautious bite, and it was the most delicious thing she'd eaten in a month. She wasn't sure if she should be irritated at Riku for that or not, but he seemed satisfied that she was eating it, and continued. "They're going to owe us a favor," he said. "They'll agree to it." He paused for a moment, then began again. "Besides, you seemed willing enough to fight the Heartless."

"The Angels," she agreed.

"The _Heartless_," Riku repeated. "Only the ones on your world were called Angels." Asuka put her sandwich down.

"I hate the Angels," she said, glaring down at the table, her irritation at Riku's know-it-all attitude bleeding into the subject she'd _really_ been thinking about since those three, strange teens had appeared on the shore near Tokyo-3. Riku stopped putting sandwich ingredients away. "They're all dead now, but our world is barely alive anymore. We got told what to do by adults, and no one cared what happened to us as long as we kept killing them. They're hideous, they destroy everything in their path, they make me _sick_, they-" she cut herself off, and was surprised to find that one of her hands was curled protectively over her chest. "I really hate them," she repeated, quieter this time and deliberately set her hand back in her lap, where Riku couldn't see it, along with her other hand, nails digging into her thighs through the skirt of her school uniform. There were a few moments of dead silence, and even over the humming of the engine, Asuka's breath sounded loud in her ears.

"…Yeah," Riku said, breaking the quiet. Asuka looked up at him sharply and saw something in his eyes that hadn't been there a minute ago. Her stomach dropped when she realized that it was probably the same look she had in her own eyes right now, too. "I hate the Heartless, too." Eventually, he looked away. "You should eat the rest of your sandwich and get some rest." Back to his normal attitude once more, he finished putting the food back in the fridge. "You and Shinji are new, and we'll try to accommodate that, but we'll need to step up the pace if we want to beat those brothers. I'll be in the cockpit with Sora if you need us, but you should learn to take naps while you can."

"Sure." Asuka picked the rest of her sandwich back up, and Riku left the galley. They didn't talk again until they got to Radiant Garden.


	5. Chapter 3

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG (for now; it won't get above PG-13ish)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gundam Wing. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-Mariemaia AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Chapter 3~**

**.**

When Shinji awoke, he found himself in a very fluffy and very pink bed. Sunlight was streaming in the window, and there was a vase of flowers on the bedside table, the soft fragrance drifting through the air and into his nose. He slowly became more aware of a woman sitting on a chair next to the bed, reading a book, and turned his head to look at her. The rustling seemed to pull her from her book, and she put it down to look at him.

"Oh, Shinji, you're finally awake!" she said happily, green eyes smiling kindly, framed by warm, brown bangs. "Everyone was quite worried about you, but it seems you've finally recovered." Shinji began to sit up, though he still felt a bit lightheaded. Looking down at that arm, he saw that instead of the four deep, bloody gashes, the skin there had been completely healed.

"Did you… fix my arm?" Shinji asked, incredulous, voice still somewhat raspy from sleep. "I…" He looked at her, confused. "Thank you?" Her smile only seemed to brighten, and even the pink bow in her long, brown hair seemed to perk up. Shinji looked back down, cheeks coloring the same light pink as everything else in the room.

"You're very welcome," she said. "I'm Aerith, by the way." Shinji was about to respond, but was interrupted when the door opened, spilling four teenagers into the room; Sora, Riku, and Kairi seemed more upbeat, followed shortly by a slightly reluctant Asuka.

"You're awake!" Sora said brightly. "We were all really worried when you passed out, but we managed to keep you well enough in time to get you to Aerith." Shinji felt somewhat overwhelmed with all these people in what he guessed was Aerith's somewhat small room, but glancing at Asuka, he saw that she looked just as uncomfortable.

"Well…" Asuka said, avoiding his gaze, "you'd be pretty useless if you just dropped dead the first time we had to fight those things. Not that you aren't useless already, of course." She glared at Shinji, then, as if daring him to say otherwise. Strangely, this actually made him feel less lost; if killing Heartless and traveling to strange worlds had reignited Asuka so suddenly, then maybe this sudden, strange turn his life had suddenly taken wasn't so bad, after all.

"I'm sure everyone's glad that you're alright," Kairi said pleasantly, before turning slightly more serious. "We _do_ have to fill you in on all the details, though." Aerith looked a little put-out by this.

"Shouldn't you let him rest a bit more?" she asked, turning sorrowful green eyes in Sora's direction. "He's still recovering from the blood loss, after all." Sora hesitated, and almost seemed about to cave when Riku stepped in.

"You can't always go around adopting everyone you see, Aerith," Riku said, a hint of exasperation in his voice. What was almost a pout on Aerith's face quickly changed to a knowing smile.

"I can try though, can't I?" she answered, looking calmly into Riku's eyes, smiling. The two of them just gazed at each other for a few seconds, but Riku looked away first, the barest hint of a blush on his cheeks. "But I'll let you talk to him," she continued, "because he _does_ need to know, sooner or later." Humming, she glided out of the room, leaving Shinji alone with the other four teens.

"The first order of business," Sora said, after Aerith had left, "is probably to introduce you to Roxas and Naminé." Shinji blinked.

"Who are Roxas and Naminé?" he asked. Sora looked at Kairi, who nodded, and then the two of them changed before Shinji's eyes.

Where Kairi once stood was a girl with ash-blonde hair, part of which was draped over one shoulder, and a short, sleeveless, white dress. She was similar to Kairi, almost identical in some aspects, but at the same time very different, more reserved and feminine where Kairi was outspoken and a bit tomboyish. In the space where Sora had been was a boy with spiky, windswept blond hair and a tan collared jacket with tan pants, tight black shirt underneath and a checkered wristband. He was also similar to Sora, enough to be his twin, but had a more serious, cautious air, seeming to share something with the blonde girl that neither shared with Sora or Kairi. So _those_ were the people with Sora and Kairi on the stained glass.

"It's nice to finally talk to you, Shinji," the blonde girl said, smiling softly. "I'm Naminé." Shinji was only able to nod in response, as he was still trying to grasp the fact that Sora and Kairi had changed into two entirely different people. "And this is Roxas," she continued, gesturing to the blond boy.

"Are you…?" Shinji began unsteadily, trying to remember his last conscious moments on the beach, "Are you the one who caught me when I…?" And the blond boy, Roxas, smiled.

"When you passed out?" he answered, raising an eyebrow, but keeping his smile friendly. "Yeah, that was me." Roxas had his hands in his pockets, but Shinji didn't get the feeling he was being rude.

"Thank you, then," Shinji replied, somewhat surprised to find a smile on his face, but relieved when Roxas's smile became more earnest as well.

"It's not like I was gonna let you fall and hit your head or something," Roxas said, which caused Naminé to let out a light laugh. Shinji chose to ignore Asuka's rolling eyes for the moment.

"Well, now that we're all introduced," Riku began, earning a flat stare from Roxas, which quickly and impossibly turned into a pout from Sora as Naminé simply closed her eyes and turned back into Kairi, "we need to tell you everything we didn't have time to before." Asuka seemed to perk up at this, though she was probably the only one.

"Naminé and Roxas used to be what we call Nobodies," Kairi said. "When a person with a strong heart and will loses their heart, a Nobody is also created, and very strong Nobodies can keep a human appearance with only minor changes." She was about to continue, but was interrupted by Asuka.

"Wait a minute," Asuka said, "doesn't that mean you're supposed to be a Heartless? And how did you get back to normal?" Riku seemed like he was about to say something, but Kairi silenced him with a look and continued.

"I'm actually what's called a Princess of Heart," she explained, smiling, "which means I have no darkness in my heart to create a Heartless. Due to some prior events," though she did not elaborate, "my heart ended up in Sora's body. He had to release both our hearts and turned into a Heartless for a short period of time, but I was able to change him back. This is when Roxas and Naminé were born, but like all other Nobodies, they did not have hearts."

"They didn't have _hearts?_" Shinji boggled, wondering how many laws of biology that broke. But Aerith had just broken dozens of other laws by healing his arm, and he couldn't ignore the almost… _magic_ properties of the Keyblade. "How do you live without a heart?" Kairi frowned and looked downwards, the paleness of Naminé bleeding back into her skin.

"You don't," Naminé responded, "not really." Did she mean that they were not actually alive? "If you don't have a heart, you're missing what you need to exist. You're empty, and it's the most horrible thing in all the worlds. The Organization, they-" Roxas emerged back out of Sora, almost defiantly.

"Organization XIII was made up of thirteen powerful Nobodies," Roxas interrupted. Naminé didn't seem to mind, however, and Shinji thought that she might actually have been glad to let someone else talk. "I was number XIII. The goal of the Organization was to collect hearts, in order to form Kingdom Hearts as the moon above our world. Once Kingdom Hearts was complete, we were told that we'd get our hearts back." They were _told_ that? It didn't sound like that was what ended up happening, if Roxas's serious mood was anything to go by. But if that was the case, then what had _actually_-

"So is that how you got back to Sora and Kairi?" Asuka asked. This was evidently the wrong question, though, and Roxas's expression became troubled for a moment.

"No," Roxas said, decisively. "Naminé was never a real part of the Organization, and I…" he paused for a moment, the same troubled expression crossing his face for a fleeting fraction of a second, "I left before Kingdom Hearts was able to be completed." After this statement, he seemed to be unwilling to say any more, but Shinji had the sudden urge to ask Roxas exactly what had happened. He wasn't sure what exactly about Roxas's explanation sparked this, but Shinji definitely knew what it felt like to be told what to do by adults and not get the full story, in his time with NERV back on Tokyo-3. Maybe he was still feeling out of his depth, here on this strange world with battles against Heartless, but if there were other people who knew how he felt, then maybe he'd been thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe it was worth listening to what these people had to say. Shinji mulled all this over in the short silence that followed Roxas's statement.

The silence, however, thankfully did not stretch long enough to become too awkward, as Naminé reluctantly continued.

"I was able to… help Roxas meet Sora," she said, and Shinji got the feeling she wasn't telling the whole story, either. "Once a Nobody really and truly meets their Somebody, they join and become one again." After meeting Roxas's eyes once again, she smiled and changed back into Kairi, Roxas following suit a moment or two later. Riku, who had refrained from explanations up until that point, took this as an opportunity to pick up where Naminé had left off.

"According to King Mickey," he said, and Shinji wondered if that was the king of this world, "once a Somebody is reunited with their Nobody, that person is said to be Awakened. Sora and Kairi are two of these Awakened, and our goal is to find the remaining five Awakened." There was a small pause as Riku allowed a moment for Shinji and Asuka to take this in.

"Why do we have to find these people?" Shinji asked slowly, trying to keep his mind focused on what the others were saying, rather than all the things they _weren't_ saying. "How will it get things back to normal?" There was so much that had gone wrong back home in Tokyo-3, but the thought that following these people might undo some of the damage made him feel slightly more hopeful.

"He wasn't able to talk about it a lot in the letter he gave us," Riku responded, "but we think that it has something to do with the process in which the Somebody and Nobody are reunited." He looked back at Kairi as if to confirm this. Nodding back at him, she smiled and brought a hand to her chest.

"When you join together," she said, closing her eyes, "it's like traveling down a bright path and finding home at the end." Opening her eyes again and glancing at Sora, he nodded as well. "That's why I think we'll be able to help the others, because if they're in the same situation we were in, we can show them how to get back home." Shinji wondered what it was like for Sora and Kairi, for Roxas and Naminé. What it felt like to have another person that was also yourself, and to call something like that home. It seemed, at first glance, like something too good to be true, but if these three were honestly trying to help, and if he could help as well, then…

"Alright," Shinji said. "I'll help you find these other five Awakened people." Asuka was gaping at him.

"What, just like that?" she demanded, hands on her hips.

"I thought that you would want to decide for yourself what you were going to do," Shinji replied, looking away. "I just said that _I_ wanted to help all the people get back to normal." He heard her huff loudly and looked back to see her staring determinedly at the wall.

"Like I'm gonna let you hog all the glory," she scoffed. "Of _course_ I'm gonna fight those things. And someone needs to be around to make sure you don't get a big head with all this saving-worlds-talk." Shinji was about to protest this, but stopped when Kairi laughed.

"It's decided, then," Kairi said happily, not seeming to be bothered by Asuka's attitude in the slightest. "But while I'll certainly be looking forward to getting to know you two better, we should probably let Shinji rest a little more."

"Or at least enough so that Aerith doesn't get mad at us," Sora grinned. Kairi started guiding the others out of the room, and Shinji saw Asuka give him one last look before leaving the room, the other girl following shortly after. Sora and Riku were going to leave as well, but Shinji felt his mouth start moving before he really knew what he was saying.

"Wait," Shinji started. Sora and Riku turned back to face him. "Um. I was wondering if I could – I mean, if it was possible…" He really hadn't thought this through, had he? But he had started, and now the two boys were looking at him expectantly, so he might as well finish it. "Is it alright if I could… talk to Roxas for a minute? There are still a few questions that I have." The other two seemed a bit surprised, but Sora just blinked and changed back into Roxas, skin glowing for a fraction of a second during the transformation.

"Sure, what is it?" Roxas asked, just the slightest bit cautious. Shinji tried to think of something to say.

"Umm…" His hands suddenly became extremely fascinating as they fidgeted with the comforter on Aerith's bed. He wanted to ask Roxas about something he'd said earlier, but-

"I'll go help Kairi finalize the equipment and supply list," Riku said, and Shinji shifted his gaze back up to see the taller boy looking at him, an eyebrow raised, before he glanced briefly at Roxas. "He needs to be at full strength before we leave, so don't keep him up too long." Roxas frowned slightly.

"I know that, Riku," The blond responded, tone a fraction on the clipped side. Shinji wondered absently why, when Sora and Riku seemed to be so close, Roxas didn't appear to get along with Riku nearly as well.

"I know, just reminding you," Riku shrugged, looking back at Shinji one more time with an unreadable expression, then turning and walking out of the room, pale hair floating in a curtain behind him as he left. The room was silent for a moment.

"So…" Roxas prompted. Shinji blinked, then remembered what he was going to say.

"I was… I was wondering," Shinji said slowly, "if you used to be a Nobody… why would you leave that group, when they said they were going to give you your heart back?"

"You want to know why I left the Organization?" Roxas seemed shocked and a little pained by the question. "No one's ever really asked me that; it's kind of-"

"I-I'm sorry," Shinji backpedaled quickly, "It was inappropriate, and I shouldn't have-" He'd really done it this time. He had tried to know more about Roxas, and had only ended up hurting him instead.

"No, no," the other boy said, voice stronger now that the shock was a bit less. "It's okay, the whole thing is just… complicated."

"Complicated?" Shinji echoed. It was something that both Roxas and Naminé had seemed to want to avoid talking about, but was it really only because it was hard to explain?

"Well, the first thing you have to understand," Roxas began, "is that as Nobodies, we were told that we couldn't _feel_ anything, that because we didn't have hearts, we didn't have emotions, either;" He sat down in the chair Aerith had occupied earlier. "we were even told that we didn't really _exist_." The blond must have interpreted Shinji's somewhat disturbed reaction correctly, because he tried to give a reassuring smile in return. "None of that is true anymore, of course, thanks to Sora and Kairi, but that was the situation at the time."

"But Sora and Kairi were separate from the Organization, right?" He looked at Roxas for confirmation, and was rewarded with an introspective frown.

"I didn't know about Sora when I was in the Organization," Roxas continued, "because unlike other Nobodies, Naminé and I didn't remember anything about having been Sora and Kairi. And the Organization took advantage of that and _lied_ to me, just so that I would help them finish Kingdom Hearts." Roxas seemed a little angry now, talking about his time in that group, and while Shinji knew the anger wasn't directed at him, he again wondered if he should have even asked Roxas such a personal question in the first place.

"So you just left when you found out about Sora?" Shinji guessed, looking to Roxas for agreement and a simple way to end the conversation.

"Not exactly," Roxas replied, looking away, a little somber. Shinji blinked, not having expected _this_ kind of reaction at all. "A good deal of the Organization was bad news all around," he said a little quietly, "but some of them weren't so bad. And Axel…" He closed his eyes for a moment. "Axel was my best friend." All of a sudden, Shinji felt as if he was walking on eggshells. "It was considerably more… difficult for me to leave, with Axel trying to stop me."

"…What happened?" Shinji whispered, not daring to make his voice any louder.

"He was sent by the Organization to bring me back, dead or alive," Roxas responded, gaze a little more on the blankets than on Shinji himself, "and when I joined with Sora instead, the Organization labeled us both traitors and started hunting us down." He looked up at Shinji like he was trying to laugh at himself, but didn't quite make it, once again frowning and staring at the blankets.

"I wasn't really aware of what happened until directly after, but…" Roxas's voice was still strong, but his hands were clutching the material of his pants; Shinji didn't dare speak. "They… we – Sora and Axel, that is – got attacked by a lot of the lesser Nobodies, and…" the blond boy blinked a few times, "…and Axel ended up…exploding himself so that Sora and I could get out of there." A short pause, and then the next part was said very quietly. "He said we made him feel like he had a heart."

"…Oh," was all Shinji could say. Their conversation had veered so strongly from his original question, and he had no idea what to say to someone who still seemed to be in a state of grief over this Axel person. Especially since he knew exactly how horrible Roxas must be feeling at that moment, how awful it was for someone you cared about to-

"You…understand what I'm trying to say, right?" Roxas asked, looking at him hopefully for some sign of agreement.

"Yeah, I actually-" Shinji only realized what he was saying as the words left his mouth, but now was not the time to take them back, "something very similar has also happened to me." Roxas seemed both saddened and reassured by this at the same time. "One of the other EVA pilots, Kaworu-kun, he also…" Roxas was still looking at him, "he is also gone. When it happened, he told me that if he had a choice between either me or him surviving, he chose me."

"Is he the one Riku reminds you of?" Roxas asked; Shinji nodded. He couldn't look at Roxas anymore, though, the memories of Kaworu-kun's face smiling up at him, surrounded by the EVA's grip, causing him to stare at his own half-clenched hand.

"He was the first person I ever met to tell me that they loved me." They were both silent for a long time.

"I… don't really know what to say," Roxas ventured cautiously, finally breaking the silence, "but before he faded for good, I was able to talk to Axel one last time." Shinji looked back up and saw that Roxas was smiling a little. "We promised each other that we'd meet again in the next life, and I really believe that it'll happen." He looked back at Shinji confidently. So maybe you'll be able to meet Kaworu, too, eventually." It pained Shinji to see Roxas smile like that.

"I don't think I'll be as lucky as you," he replied, trying to keep the despair out of his voice. "I… they said Kaworu-kun wasn't human. They said he was an Angel, and I-" Roxas's face fell, and Shinji had to look away again. "I had to-" he cut himself off.

"I'm… I'm sorry," he heard Roxas murmur. "I was trying to help, but… I'm so sorry." Shinji tried to get his breathing under control.

"Thank you," he said hoarsely. "You're a good person." Looking back up at Roxas's apologetic face, he wasn't sure which of them was making the blond's eyes look so blurry. "I think you'll get to meet Axel, too."

"I- thanks," Roxas responded, subdued. "I think you're a good person, too." He blinked again. "I know you should probably rest now, or at least until Aerith looks at you again, but…" Roxas's face was a little hopeful again, "I know it's hard to get thrown so suddenly into a situation like this, so if you ever want to talk, I… I'd like to talk with you again."

"Thank you," Shinji replied honestly, "I'd… like to…" his response was interrupted by a yawn, "…talk to you again, too." And it was true. In all the strange things that had happened since Shinji and Asuka had met those visitors on the beach in Tokyo-3, he'd met someone he wouldn't mind calling a friend. "Maybe after I rest some more, though." Even if the blood loss hadn't taken out Shinji's strength, then the conversation he'd just had with Roxas, over such a painful topic, would have still exhausted him. Still, Shinji's vision was finally clear once more, and he was almost elated to see Roxas smile a little more happily as well. "Is… do you think Aerith will be upset because I didn't go right back to sleep?" he asked. Roxas looked a little surprised.

"I don't know," the blond said, "but Aerith is kind of scary when she's mad."

"How scary is that?" Shinji questioned. Roxas stood up.

"I'm not sure exactly, myself," Roxas responded, eyes a little wider, "but Sora just tells me that it's scary." Shinji laid back down on the bed. "We can definitely talk later, okay?" Shinji nodded.

"Yeah," he said, serious, when Roxas was at the door. "I- I'd really like that."

"Yeah," was the response, as a wide smile finally broke over the other's face, and blond hair darkened into brown as the boy turned and left the room. Shinji pulled the covers over himself, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep once he heard the footsteps go all the way down the stairs.


	6. Chapter 4

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Chapter 4~**

**.**

When Shinji woke up sometime later, he was pleasantly surprised to find that in addition to his arm, the rest of his body was feeling stronger now, as well. Though there was no one else in the room with him this time, he heard the muffled sound of conversation downstairs that told him the others were still in the house. Sitting up and stretching, he pushed the covers off of himself and stood up. Finding his sneakers by the foot of the bed, he slipped them on and started walking down the wooden stairs just outside the door to Aerith's room.

The room at the foot of the stairs was messy, loud, and above all else, crowded. Books were piled on shelves, tables, chairs, and even the floor, a few occupants of the room standing where there was no sitting room. In contrast to the books, however, a whole section of the room was devoted to a large computer, where a scruffy-looking blond man was smoking a cigarette and typing rapidly and a brunet man in black leather pants looking over his shoulder and giving suggestions. Near where Riku and Kairi were sitting, a girl with short, black hair was talking excitedly and gesturing wildly, causing Kairi to cover her mouth as she giggled. When Shinji walked into the room, Asuka, who'd been browsing one of the bookshelves, looked over towards the stairs and caught his eye.

"Oh, you're finally awake," she said, sounding bored-on-purpose. All the other eyes in the room immediately turned to Shinji, including those of Sora, Aerith, and an old man with a long beard in pale blue robes, who had apparently walked in from another room when they heard Asuka speak. Asuka, however, turned to Kairi, almost as if dismissing Shinji once she knew where he was. "Does this mean we can go to the next world now?"

"Yes," Kairi answered, with a smile, "but not before we introduce Shinji to the rest of the Restoration Committee." Shinji wondered how the girl could be so patient with someone like Asuka, and also absently wondered if that was because of that princess-without-darkness condition she mentioned earlier. "This," she said to Shinji, gesturing to the upbeat girl she'd been talking to earlier, "is Yuffie."

"The greatest ninja in the world!" the girl, Yuffie, said brightly, with a large smile. "It's great to finally meet you when you're conscious." As for Shinji himself, he just nodded slowly, under the impression that great ninja were supposed to be stealthy instead of loud and outgoing.

"The one at the computer is Cid," Kairi continued, as the man in question waved a hand distractedly before returning to typing on the computer. "The one with him is Leon, the leader of the Committee…" Now that the brunet man was facing him, Shinji could see that a scar ran diagonally on his face, from his right brow, down across his nose, and to the left. Leon inclined his head in acknowledgment and crossed his arms. "…and the one with Sora and Aerith is the wizard Merlin, who also owns this house." Well, that was certainly a lot of people.

"Thank you for letting us stay in your house," Shinji said, bowing towards the committee.

"So polite!" he thought he heard Aerith say, pleased, but she was quickly interrupted by Asuka.

"Wait… Merlin the Wizard?" she exclaimed, shocked. "_The_ Merlin?"

"Yes, I'm that Merlin," the wizard replied, laughing. "In fact, I was instructed by King Mickey to teach you kids the basics in magic before you depart." Asuka seemed awed, but Shinji was still a bit confused.

"We're going to learn magic?" he asked, and Merlin nodded.

"Please follow me into the training room," Merlin said, and gestured at Shinji and Asuka to follow him down a set of stairs that Shinji could've _sworn_ hadn't been there a second ago. They did so, end ended up in a stone-walled room with what seemed like a lot of beaten-up, old furniture. "Now," Merlin explained, once the three of them were downstairs, "I'm going to give each of you just one spell to start out with, but as you continue to grow stronger, you'll start to pick up the rest on your own." He snapped his fingers, and a thick, leather-bound book appeared out of thin air. He flipped through the old tome for a few moments, then stopped, a smile on his face, and plucked two pages out of it. "For the young lady," he began, and presented Asuka with a page; it disappeared in a burst of red sparks once she touched it, "and for the young gentleman," and he handed the other page to Shinji. When Shinji's fingers came in contact with it, it too disappeared, this time with blue sparks, as well as a tingling sensation that traveled through his arm to sit in his chest.

"What was that?" Shinji asked the wizard, who pushed his glasses further up his nose.

"Ah, yes," Merlin responded. "Now, if you'll take out your keyblades and aim them at one of the targets I've provided for you," and he gestured at the furniture as he did so, "you will be able to create the demonstration yourselves. If the young lady will start us off?" Asuka seemed to find being called a young lady somewhat awkward, but complied and took out her keyblade, pointing it at a wooden chair. "Concentrate," Merlin said, "and _feel_ what magic you want to cast." Asuka furrowed her brow, and after a moment of concentration, a small fireball shot out from the tip of her keyblade and set the chair aflame. "Excellent!"

"Simple," Asuka said, looking pleased with herself.

"Now," Merlin continued, "if the young gentleman will take his turn?" Shinji nodded, called his keyblade to his hand, and pointed it at another of the chairs. "Remember, _feel_ which magic you want to cast." Shinji thought about that tingling he'd experienced earlier, and willed it to travel from inside of him and out of his keyblade. After a few seconds, he felt a burst of slightly chilled energy travel through the keyblade, shooting out at the chair as a small chunk of ice that also froze the chair in its place. "Well done, Shinji."

"Did I really do that?" Shinji wondered aloud, looking from his keyblade back to the chair.

"Always remember, you two," Merlin said, with a hint of seriousness, "that the keyblade is a very powerful weapon. It is up to you two to each unlock its secrets and discover how best to use that power." Asuka looked at her own keyblade determinedly, then back at Merlin, though she didn't say anything. After a moment of silence, Shinji nodded at Merlin, who seemed satisfied by these two responses. "Now, I believe you two have a journey to complete, along with the others, so I won't keep you any longer."

"Thank you," Shinji said, again giving a small bow. Merlin inclined his head, and then with another snap of his fingers, made the stairs appear once again, as well as undo the magic that had been performed on the two chairs. With that, Shinji climbed back up the stairs, Asuka following behind him. Sora gave them a little wave when the two of them stepped back into the main room, and started to speak as they approached him.

"Riku, Kairi, and I are ready to go," Sora said, "and the letter we got from King Mickey says which world we need to go to in order to find the other Keybearers." There was another mention of that king of theirs.

"Your king sent you a letter?" Shinji asked. He silently wondered if the three of them were secretly royalty in disguise. Sora looked unsure as to how to respond, but Riku quickly explained.

"He's investigating more about the enemy himself," Riku responded, lifting one of the bags of supplies over his shoulder. "Probably those brothers." Riku probably meant that man Loz, and the group he seemed to be associated with. And their mother… "We'll give you the details once we're on the ship."

"The ship?"

"How do you think we _got_ here, stupid?" Asuka said. "Their _spaceship_." They'd been in a _spaceship?_ Shinji didn't remember any of that.

"Oh, right," Sora laughed, rubbing the back of his neck momentarily. "Forgot you weren't exactly conscious for that part." Riku and Kairi exchanged an amused look as Sora picked up another of the bags himself and then planted a smile firmly on his face. "Anyway, since you're healed now and we've got all our supplies, let's get going." They said goodbye to the Restoration Committee and started to walk to the ship's hangar, quite a few people waving to Sora as they crossed a small shopping area. When they finally got to the ship itself, it was... not quite what Shinji expected.

"It's so… small." Apart from the window on the cockpit, the rest of the ship – blocky and brightly-colored in a strange combination of orange, yellow, blue purple, white, and neon green – barely seemed like it could fit the group. It certainly didn't look like it could fit the myriad of supplies that the others claimed had been bought; in addition to the bags that Sora and Riku were carrying, there were also four wooden crates stamped with _RG_ and a picture of some… small, portly creature with wings and a large antenna on them.

"It's bigger on the inside," Sora said helpfully, opening the hatch in side of the ship and gesturing with his free hand for the others to follow. That… didn't really make sense, and it must've shown on Shinji's face. "It's part of the magic," he explained, grinning. "If you guys could help bring those crates back to the galley and storage in the aft, we can get going." With that, Sora went into the ship, followed by Riku with his own load of bags. Turning to walk over to the crates, one of which was already being lifted and carried by Kairi, Shinji was pleased to find out that they weren't actually that heavy. Although Asuka had a somewhat sullen expression on her face, presumably at the thought of being told what to do, Shinji was actually looking forward to the trip a little more. And when he actually stepped into the ship itself, his mouth dropped open a little.

It really _was_ bigger on the inside than the outside. The first area they entered was a combination of work-and-rest area, with a big, chart-and-instrument-covered table with chairs and a few lower tables with benches. To one side was a hatch which seemed to lead to the cockpit, but Shinji followed to others to the hatch on the other side, which led to an area with sleeping berths. Sora and Riku put their bags down there, but Kairi continued walking through the area to another hatch further on.

"I'll go get the other crate," Shinji heard Riku say from over his shoulder.

"Thanks!" Kairi called back brightly, then looked over her shoulder at Shinji and Asuka. "Follow me." They did so, and Kairi led them through what looked like the ship's galley. At the far end of the galley were two smaller hatches, and Kairi set her crate down to open both of those. One of the compartments seemed standard enough, but the other one had a soft green-blue glow emanating from within. "The food goes in this one," Kairi explained, gesturing towards the glowing compartment, "in stasis, so it doesn't go bad. I think Asuka's crate and mine are the ones with the food, and Shinji's is other supplies. Since the ship is fairly small, it's important to keep everything in its proper place." With that, she opened the hinge of her crate to double-check, picked it up again, and started moving its contents into various areas of the compartment.

Not really knowing what to do besides follow her lead, Shinji set his crate down to look inside. Cleaning supplies and toilet paper, how mundane for a magical spaceship. Looking inside of the compartment to see where the things should go, he tried to put everything in a place that made sense with what items were already there.

"The sleeping area is small, too," Asuka commented, looking through her crate as well. "Does it get annoying, having to share a space with two guys? How do you get any privacy?"

"That sort of privacy isn't really a concern for the three of us," Kairi responded serenely. Shinji looked up from his crate to look at her. Did she mean… "We're very close." Were Kairi, Sora, and Riku really in _that_ kind of a relationship? "You might as well know now, since we'll be traveling together for a while." She was smiling, and while Asuka's eyebrows had disappeared into her bangs, and Shinji felt like his face was warm, Kairi didn't seem bothered by this in the slightest.

"…Oh," was all Asuka said. "That's… okay."

"I'm glad you understand," Kairi said. But it also seemed to be the end of the discussion, so Shinji turned back to finish emptying his crate, ears still with the faintest hint of pink. Kairi acted like she didn't want to make a big deal of it, so… Shinji would leave them their privacy and not ask about it. He finished quickly after, and was about to close the hatch again, when Kairi stopped him. "Riku's still getting the other crate," she reminded him, "so you can leave that for now." Shinji nodded, but now he wasn't really sure what he was supposed to be doing. "Why don't you go help Sora unpack the other stuff? He said he got something that you might be interested in."

"Alright," he responded, then turned back towards the sleeping area once again. On his way, he had to stop and make himself flat against the bulkhead in order to let Riku pass; the silver-haired boy nodded at him politely, but didn't speak otherwise. In the sleeping area, Sora was unpacking one of the bags and separating the contents onto different beds. When he heard Shinji come in, he looked up and smiled.

"Kairi said I should help you unpack here," Shinji said, not entirely sure that he knew where everything should go.

"Great!" Sora responded. "C'mere." Shinji obliged and walked up to the bag Sora was currently emptying. "You guys didn't seem to have anything with you when we picked you up," Sora started, and Shinji assumed he was referring to Asuka and himself, "so we picked up some pajamas and stuff for you to wear at night. We don't have extra clothes, but Kairi got some special detergent that's gonna make them more durable." He handed a pile of clothes and toiletries to Shinji. "There's lockers under the bunks where you can store those; just write your name on the card at the front."

"Thank you," Shinji responded, blinking a few times, then turning to look for a locker.

"No problem," Sora responded. Shinji saw one that didn't seem to have a name on it yet and pulled it out from under the bunk. Opening it, he divided the things Sora had bought into the various compartments within. "I got a pencil somewhere…" Shinji stood back up to see Sora digging in his pockets, concentrating. After a few more seconds, a triumphant expression appeared on Sora's face and he pulled out a short, though still usable, pencil. "Here you go." Shinji made a noise of acknowledgement, and then knelt down to pull the card out of the plastic cover at the front of the locker. "Which reminds me…" Shinji wrote down his name, put the card back in, pushed the locker under the bunk, and then turned to face Sora once more.

"What is it?" Sora seemed to be holding some sort of small knapsack.

"We got one of each for you and Asuka, since I figured you'd be needing them." He traded the pencil in Shinji's hand for the knapsack. "It's enchanted to be bigger on the inside," like a lot of things were, apparently, "so you can put as much stuff in there as you want and it'll never get full. I put some other stuff in there for you to use, since it'll be useful when we have to fight next. Oh, and if you put the bag in your pocket, it'll shrink to fit, but when it's that small, you can't use everything at once."

"You went through all this trouble for us…" Shinji murmured, "but we're new, we don't have the money to pay for all this." The knapsack, especially, seemed expensive. And inside were a few potions and some sort of bangle. He took out the bangle and looked back up at Sora, who was smiling.

"Well, you're new to this, right?" Sora responded. "But we're a team here, so everyone helps each other out. And we're friends, right?" Sora seemed to Shinji like the type of person who made friends easily, but Shinji was already friends with Roxas, wasn't he? That probably made him friends with Sora, at least halfway. Back when he'd been fighting for NERV, people hadn't been so generous. And out of those he'd considered friends… they were unreachable now. He wasn't even sure if Asuka counted, either, no matter the fact that they were now fighting together again. But maybe that could change, now, and Shinji found himself wanting to try.

"Right. Thank you." Sora smiled wider at that, and then launched into another energized explanation.

"Great! So, that bangle is mostly for defense, right? But it also has resistance against dark elemental attacks, so that'll be really useful for you. You should put that on now, but everything else can stay in the bag, and then you can put that in your pocket. Kairi bought pajamas and stuff for Asuka, but you should probably let her put away that stuff herself. This is the bag we got for Asuka, too, so you can put that on the bunk over there with the other stuff Kairi got her." Shinji nodded hastily, trying to keep up, and put his magically shrinking bag in the pocket of his pants. Sora put a pile of stuff into his hands, and then gestured at one of the beds. "Oh, and the rest of that bag is mine and Riku's so that goes there, and then the next bag has more Potions and bandages and stuff, so that can go in the main room." He pointed with his thumb back towards the room with all the tables and charts. "The Potions go in the first cabinet on the left, and the other stuff goes in the cabinet right next to that one."

"Okay." Shinji picked up bag with the first aid equipment and started walking back towards the chart-and-lounge area.

"Oh, and when we finish putting stuff away," Sora added, causing Shinji to turn back around and look at him once more, "Riku and I can show you how we do navigation, if you want. It might seem like it's complicated at first, but it's actually pretty fun once you get the hang of it. And if you like it, you can even pilot for a little, if there aren't too many Heartless ships where we are." It sounded slightly daunting, especially the part about Heartless _spaceships_, but it couldn't be too bad, right? And maybe he'd get to know Sora and Roxas – and even Riku, who hadn't gotten off to the ideal start with – better.

"Yeah, okay," Shinji answered, with thankfully only a little bit of the nervousness he was feeling apparent in his voice.

"It'll be fun," Sora repeated, smiling again. "Now let's finish stowing all this away so we can get going. I haven't been to the world the King was talking about in the letter before; I'm really excited!" Shinji nodded, and then went to put the rest of the first aid supplies away. In the main area of the ship, Shinji was alone in his task, and it was the first real break he'd had to stop and collect his thoughts since first meeting Sora, Riku, and Kairi on the beach in Tokyo-3. When the others had first appeared, he'd been dead set against the idea of fighting again, much less the concept of his EVA turning into a Keyblade so he could fight more of the same creatures as the Angels. Now that he'd gotten more information and spent more time with these people, though, it was clear that they actually needed his help to fix what had gone wrong in Tokyo-3, and to stop the Heartless from ruining any _more_ worlds. The people, too, had been nice, and if he was still figuring out how to get along with all of them, he still thought that they seemed at least dependable. Maybe it really _wouldn't_ be so bad, this journey that was beginning.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I know that this was supposed to be out over the weekend, but holidays kinda got in the way a little, heh.


	7. Chapter 5

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. Familiarity with Gundam Wing is not necessary, either, but it helps. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Chapter 5~**

**.**

Watching Sora and Riku chart a course to the next world and navigate was actually fairly interesting. Using the coordinates they'd gotten from their king's letter, they tried to find a route from Radiant Garden that balanced how much time it would take with the number of Heartless ships they were likely to encounter as best they could.

"Up to here," Riku said, drawing a short line on one of the charts with his finger, "the ship has a record of the different routes. If we warp to Port Royal first, we can cut our manual navigation in half." Sora was nodding in agreement.

"Warping?" Was that… safe?

"As long as the ship's been to a world before," Sora explained, "we can use the warp Gummi to travel there a lot faster." Seeing Shinji's doubtful expression, he smiled. "It's perfectly safe, don't worry. It's only when we pilot manually that we actually have to fight the Heartless ships and clear out asteroids, that sort of thing." They were going to have to blow up _asteroids_, too? Riku chuckled.

"Don't worry," Riku added, "we've got a pretty good weapons system."

"Yeah," Sora agreed. "Since I usually do the piloting and Riku's usually in charge of the lasers and missiles, we can clear out obstacles on the routes pretty fast." Riku smiled at that, and then bent his head down to point at the map again, silver-white bangs falling in his face and covering up his expression.

"So I figured that once we get past Port Royal," Riku continued, tone confident, "we can take a direct route in this direction, which should bring us to the new world by tomorrow morning…" Now that Shinji wasn't refusing to fight, Riku was actually a pleasant person. There were still moments when he reminded Shinji of Kaworu-kun, but since talking with Roxas about things, he was starting to notice the differences more than the similarities.

The actual travel, too, was a lot easier than Shinji had expected it would be. After Sora entered the route and coordinates into the ship's navigation system, it was set to warp for the majority of the night. Sora, Riku and Kairi took turns checking to make sure they were still on course during the night, but let Shinji and Asuka sleep. The sound of the engines, too, was constant enough without being loud and lulled Shinji to sleep fairly quickly. It wasn't until early the next morning that someone gently shook Shinji awake from his slumber. Blinking a few times and pushing himself up, Shinji saw that it was Roxas.

"Morning," Roxas said.

"Good morning," Shinji responded, trying not to be too loud since it seemed like Asuka and Kairi were still asleep on their respective bunks. "Are we there already?"

"Sora said you wanted to see what piloting the ship was like when we get out of warp," Roxas said, and Shinji nodded. "That's going to happen in about twenty minutes, so you can take your shower and get dressed before then. It'd be a good idea to do that before Kairi and Asuka wake up, too, so it doesn't get crowded."

"Alright." With that, Roxas walked back towards the cockpit, while Shinji gathered his clothes and toiletries. About fifteen minutes later, he walked into the cockpit to find Sora and Riku sitting in two of the chairs there, Sora holding the controls while Riku checked different dials and flipped switches. The view from the window in front was a blue-gray expanse, which Shinji thought must be the warp space.

"Just in time," Sora said, looking over his shoulder for a moment. "You can sit down over there." Shinji assumed that Sora meant the third, empty chair, and did so. Reaching around, he buckled the half-seatbelt-half-harness on the chair around himself. It was only after glancing at the other two boys that he noticed Sora was only wearing the seatbelt part and Riku didn't have any sort of restraint around himself at all, but he still figured that it was better to be safe than sorry, at least the first time.

"Leaving warp in two minutes," a squeaky, slightly computerized voice said, which Shinji assumed was the computer's navigation system. Riku flipped some more switches. Then, two minutes later and in a slightly different squeaky voice, "Entering space outside Port Royal." There was a feeling somewhat like a sideways elevator arriving at its destination, and then the view through the window changed to an expanse of stars, in the center of which was the image of an oddly-shaped planet.

"The shape…" Shinji began.

"A lot of planets look like that from Gummi-space," Sora explained. "It helps show what's important about the world and what it's like, generally." Sora glanced at the navigation panel, and then guided the ship around the planet before moving off to the left. "Alright, we're moving onto the new route now."

"Ready," Riku said, hands at another set of controls. And with that, they moved towards the new world. Shinji was surprised at how quickly some of the other spaceships appeared, and since all the other crafts were shooting at the ship Shinji and the others were on, he assumed the ones attacking them were the Heartless. In addition to all of those ships, there were also asteroids and various other obstacles or shields the Heartless had built, so there were a lot of things that either had to be avoided or blown up. Sora and Riku were an efficient piloting team, though, and between their coordination and the ship's shields, everything held up just fine. There also seemed to be some sort of tractor beam on the ship because one of the screens near Shinji was listing a record of different types of 'Gummi blocks' that were being collected.

"Entering space outside the unidentified world," the squeaky-voiced navigation computer said, after a while, and as the last few remaining Heartless ships abandoned pursuit, Sora slowly lowered the ship's speed. An image of a planet and its moon slowly appeared, with other small areas around the two connected by rings, and Shinji guessed that it was the image of the world. "Land in the L4 Colony?" the navigation system asked.

"Yeah," Sora answered, and after another elevator-like sensation, the ship moved from outside the world to a different area of space, outside what seemed like a metal space _colony_.

"Landing in the Earth and Colonies," the navigation computer said. So that was the name of the world. "The location is now saved for future warp travel."

"Thanks," Sora answered, and then steered the ship towards the colony. After another minute, something beeped, and a light flashed on one of the panels.

"What's that?" Shinji asked.

"That's the hailing frequency," Riku said, and pushed another of the buttons. A video screen popped up on the front window, revealing a frowning uniformed man.

"Unidentified vessel, please state your name, ship code, and classification number." The man didn't look very pleased to see them, and as Sora looked at Riku, who in turn pointed at another of the screens, the man only seemed to grow more impatient. "Well?"

"This is the, um, Highwind II," Sora answered, reading off the screen, "ship code G-3700," the uniformed man's expression started to look suspicious, "classification number DI, um… DI5739." Sora looked back up at the man with a winning smile.

"One moment, please," the man said, and then seemed to enter something into his computer. Then, his eyebrows raised, he swallowed, and then looked back at Sora, who was still grinning, with a very nervous expression. "E-Excuse me," the main said suddenly. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Please begin docking at once." With that, the video screen turned off and Sora continued flying the ship to the colony.

"…What just happened?" Shinji asked.

"Camouflage," Riku replied. "We're not supposed to let people find out about the other worlds, and the ship sometimes helps with that."

"Oh." Were they going to have to wear different clothes as well?

"But this world seems fairly normal," Riku continued, as if reading Shinji's expression, "so I don't think we'll need any other spells to blend in." Shinji was about to ask what other kinds of camouflage spells there were, but at that moment, the hatch to the lounge area opened and Kairi poked her head in.

"Breakfast is ready," she said, "when you're done docking."

"Okay," Sora said over his shoulder, then turned to Shijni. "You can go ahead and eat; Riku and I probably have to talk to those guys again." Shinji nodded, and then followed Kairi back to the galley.

"I figured we wouldn't have much time to eat," Kairi explained, gesturing at what seemed like some weird type of crepe, "so this is something we can eat on the go." There was also a bowl of rice, some scrambled eggs, chopped up sausage and some red-and-orange bits that looked kind of like peppers. At the table, Asuka was drowning her eggs in ketchup. Shinji was a bit doubtful at first, but the breakfast wasn't actually that bad.

"What kind of crepe is this?" Shinji asked. "Do they make them different on your world?"

"What's a crepe?" Kairi asked in return. They both blinked, and then Kairi started laughing.

A little while later, during which Kairi had traded places with Riku so that Sora would have help docking and negotiating and Riku could eat, they'd successfully arrived in the L4 colony without issue. According to Riku – who'd helped Shinji clean up, since Kairi and Asuka had done the cooking that morning – the ship ended up having to dock in a special area that was usually reserved for special business meetings or government officials.

"Is that a bad thing?" Were they going to get in trouble with the colony's government?

"It's… unusual," Riku answered, "but we should be okay. Those customs people seem to think we're higher-ups of something anyway, so it'll help them stay out of our way."

"Oh, that reminds me." Sora had just walked in, but he was somehow already halfway done with making his crepe. "When we're on the different worlds, we're not supposed to let people find out we're from the outside. It's really important."

"But you told Asuka and I right away about it…"

"That's because we were looking for you specifically," Riku pointed out, "because we needed you to help us fight." Shinji hadn't thought of it like that before. But if they were going to have to fight again…

"Are there going to be…" he almost said Angels, "Heartless here, too?" And he hadn't done very well the last time they'd fought.

"Probably," Sora said, frowning before he took another bite of… had he really eaten that much already? He must have seen Shinji's reaction, though, because he tried another pep talk. "But we'll be fine! There's five of us already, and the other two new keybearers are supposed to be on this world, too."

"I passed out the last time we fought…"

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," Riku said. Shinji'd expected Sora to be enthusiastic, but Riku didn't really seem like the encouraging type; Sora, apparently, thought this interesting as well, since he actually stopped eating for a moment to watch the conversation. "You had a rough start, but you also have a lot of potential."

"…You think I have potential?" Shinji shouldn't be thinking of Riku as anyone but who he actually was.

"You haven't used your Keyblade like this before," Riku elaborated, "but you _have_ fought against the Heartless before. It's just a matter of applying that knowledge to your current situation." It was… a very tactical way of trying to encourage him, but it actually managed to calm some of Shinji's nerves.

"I'll try to remember that." Riku nodded, and then looked back over towards Sora.

"You done yet?"

"Yeah, let's go." Sora was, in fact, completely done with his crepe. And everything else was put away, so now it was time to actually see what the colony was like. Meeting Asuka and Kairi in the lounge, they all checked their bags one last time, and then exited the ship.

Looking around at the space port they'd docked in, Shinji was amazed at just how many people there were here. He wasn't used to having to deal with so many others, both due to his natural gravitation for being alone and the sheer absence of most others since the Instrumentality, until recently. Radiant Garden was a city that had mostly recovered from Heartless attacks in previous years, or so Shinji had been told by Kairi over dinner on the ship the night before, but it was _nothing_ compared to what a second uniformed man who'd greeted them once they'd disembarked as "the best colony in the L4 cluster". It seemed as if everything was happening at once; after Sora had given the man their ship's information and paid a considerable docking fee for the special area, more eyes had widened, fingers had been snapped, passes had been issued, and space-suited workers had been ordered to make accommodations, no questions asked.

"D'you think they're with the Preventers?" one of the workers whispered as they walked away from the registration area.

"No, they look too young," another worker responded. "Preventers has some young members, but not _that_ young."

"Quiet, you two," a third responded. "The sergeant said everything was classified!"

As Shinji walked with the others through the port, the scent of what was probably some type of fuel or hydraulic oil lingered in the main docking area, probably coming from the large hoses that seemed to be hooked up to some of the other ships. There were also multicolored sparks rising from a welding project on one of the ships' hulls, and it gave off a strange, green, acrid smoke. The smells of the dock itself were slowly replaced, however, by more organic scents and they continued through the passages to the colony itself. They must've passed a cafeteria by now because he caught the faint whiff of what could only be described as a microwave dinner. In the past, Shinji'd always disliked when Misato-san had bought packaged meals for herself, Shinji, and Asuka to eat, but now that things had changed so much, it was almost nostalgic.

Partially because he was curious and partly to take his mind off of life back on Tokyo-3, Shinji reached into his pocket to pull out the pass he'd been given by the registrar at the dock, via Sora. It was apparently some sort of security pass, because in addition to his name, his "access level" was "visitor", he was labeled as an "Earth Citizen", and his "PLevel" was "green". Maybe "Plevel" stood for Preventers? Shinji wasn't really sure what any of these things meant in the colony, but he supposed they'd find out eventually; he just hoped that they'd be able to find the other two keyblade wielders somewhere nearby.

And once they stepped into the actual colony, Shinji felt his breath catch in his throat. The shape of the colony was vaguely circular on the inside, like everyone was in a very large hamster wheel. The sides of the colony were metal, and the artificial gravity generated by the colony meant that the people and buildings in the center "track" curved all the way around in a giant loop. If he looked straight up, it seemed like everything on the other side of the colony was upside-down and sticking to the ceiling. One of the windows to space showed a few asteroids with small buildings on them, but the majority of activity was here on the colony itself. They all spent a few moments just taking everything in, but Shinji eventually brought his gaze down to look at the others.

"So…" Asuka said, "what do we do now?"

"Now," Sora responded, grinning, "we follow Kairi." Both Shinji and Asuka glanced over at Kairi.

"It's a little easier for me to sense where other keybearers are," she explained, smoothing out invisible wrinkles on her skirt, "although it's not always predictable how that happens. The people here think we're tourists," Riku smirked at that statement like 'tourists' was another word for 'mysterious higher-ups', "so we should probably just walk around and explore the world. Any clues about the other keybearers will come to us when it's best." Kairi seemed very serene about the whole thing, and while it all seemed a little strange, Sora and Riku were agreeing with her statement. "So, shall we go?" Then, she turned to walk down the nearest sidewalk, and they began exploring this new, futuristic world.


	8. Chapter 6

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. Familiarity with Gundam Wing is not necessary, either, but it helps. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>

**Awakenings**

**~Chapter 6~**

**.**

"Excuse me, miss?" Kairi slowed, turning to face the man who'd spoken. They'd been walking for a while now, and while there weren't any Heartless on the colony yet, it was so densely packed with people and buildings that they were only about halfway around the colony from their destination. The man was only about nineteen or twenty, smiling, with a mop of short, blond hair, but he was dressed impeccably in a tailored, khaki suit and carrying a briefcase. On the surface, he seemed to be one of the businessmen who worked in these buildings, albeit a surprisingly young one, but there was something about him that said he was someone much more knowledgeable than that.

"Yes, what is it?" Kairi responded, looking at the man curiously.

"I'm sorry, but I can't help noticing that you seem to be looking for something," the man said. Kairi blinked, and Shinji noticed that Sora and Riku had subtly moved so that they were flanking her. The man's eyes flicked for a moment to Sora and Riku, as if assessing them in a surprisingly strategic manner, but then went back to Kairi and continued to smile as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and the boys' faux pas had been forgiven. Despite the fact that the man seemed to actually be someone very different from a regular businessman, Shinji didn't think that he'd be an obstacle. The way he carried himself said that he was powerful, but it somehow seemed unlikely that they would actually have to fight him.

"That's true," Kairi said, as polite as ever. "We're tourists, you see, and we've never visited the colonies before."

"As a native of this place, perhaps I could help you find what it is you've been searching for," the man suggested, equally pleasant, "since it seems like you've traveled from _very_ far away." From the way he said it… did the man actually figure out that they were from another world? Everyone in their group except Kairi tensed a little at that last statement.

"We _have_ traveled a long way," Kairi admitted, though she didn't seem embarrassed in the slightest. Riku seemed like he was going to say something to Kairi, but she made some sort of hand motion that changed his mind. Then, she tilted her head slightly, as if she was looking for something else in the blond man's expression. "How did you know?"

"I just… know," he responded simply. A look of understanding passed across Kairi's face.

"Then I definitely think you can help us," Kairi said, pleased. "We need to talk more."

"I agree," the man said. "Although I assume that we should have this conversation somewhere a little more private." Kairi nodded. "Follow me." Sora and Riku looked at Kairi quizzically.

"It's alright," Kairi said, as much to Shinji and Asuka as to Sora and Riku, "I have a good feeling about this." That seemed to satisfy Sora and Riku, so Shinji figured that it was part of the special sense Kairi had that she'd talked about earlier. Then, she turned to follow the man into one of the buildings nearby, and the rest of them followed Kairi in turn. After a brief conversation with a receptionist, the blond man led them into an empty meeting room and shut the door behind them, then continued his conversation with Kairi.

The man's name, they found out, was Quatre Winner. After they'd all introduced themselves, Kairi explained to Quatre, with help from Sora and Riku, about the keyblades, the Heartless, and their mission to find the Awakened. While Quatre was surprised when Roxas and Naminé introduced themselves, the idea of the keyblades and Heartless in general didn't actually seem to be that unusual to him.

"There have been rumors lately," Quatre said, "of creatures that sound similar to these Heartless you've been talking about, on the Earth. The Preventers have been trying to keep it quiet, but I think the situation's starting to get out of their control." There was that word again…

"The Preventers…" Riku responded. "We heard that term when we arrived here. Are they your military on this world?"

"Well…" Quatre started, "yes and no." He seemed like he was trying to decide how much to tell. "After the Eve Wars ended a few years ago, there was a restructuring of the government. Traditional military in every country and colony was disbanded when they joined the Earth Sphere Unified Nation, and the Preventers were set up as a smaller peacekeeping force. There have been post-war cleanups and a few minor rebellions since then, but _nothing_ on this scale before. If a large enough crisis were to emerge, the Preventers might not be able to stop it with the forces they have now."

"You're actually a part of these Preventers," Asuka asked, "aren't you?" Quatre looked a little uncomfortable. Sora and Riku seemed surprised, but Shinji saw where she was going with her question; he hadn't been in NERV as long as Asuka had, but to know that much about a military organization while still being as close-mouthed as possible, you were probably affiliated with it in some way.

"I'm technically a part-time employee," he admitted, "but I only get called in under special circumstances, and I'm not involved in any of the day-to-day affairs. If the situation really is as serious as you say it is, I can get you in contact with Commander Une, so you can work together to stop those Heartless." But if Quatre could contact the _commander_ directly, he was much more involved than Shinji had previously thought.

"But that's not all you can help us with," Kairi said, smiling serenely. Quatre's gaze focused on her.

"You mean…" he started, slightly unsure.

"Yes," Kairi responded. "That was how you found us, wasn't it?" Shinji wasn't quite sure where the thread of the conversation had gone, and now that they weren't talking about the Preventers anymore, Asuka seemed to have lost it as well. And again, in contrast, Sora and Riku seemed to understand where Kairi was going with this.

"I've always been able to feel an afterimage of other peoples' emotions," Quatre said, "which is how I knew you were looking for something, but…"

"…We're also looking for a few some_ones_," Kairi finished for him, and the rest of the pieces clicked into place. "Not everyone has that particular ability of yours, but your heart is still special." She tilted her head to the side slightly, still smiling. "Why don't you give it a try?"

"How?" Quatre asked.

"Just call it," Sora piped in, "and it'll be there." Then with a look of intense concentration, Quatre closed his eyes and held out his right hand. After a few moments, there were golden sparkles forming around his hand, and then a bright flash of light. When the afterimage cleared from Shinji's eyes, Quatre was now holding a keyblade of his own.

They'd found the next keybearer.

"You were right," Quatre said, looking down at his keyblade. The keyblade as a whole seemed to be imitating some type of sword that was curved at the end, with metal strings filling in the curve like some sort of instrument. The handle was made of yellow and black metal, and the keychain was a tiny red hat with a black tassel. Quatre himself was now a little more rumpled than before – and Shinji wondered if every keybearer had to fight something the first time they got their keyblade – and his suit had a rip in it, but his eyes were bright and his expression was one of unexpected satisfaction.

"You've fought before," Riku noted, probably because Quatre had seemed to handle his inner fight without any damage other than scratches. "Was it with the Preventers?" Quatre looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I _have_ fought before," he answered, and his gaze was a little distant, "during the war, but it was very different." Then he looked back down at his keyblade. "Sandrock was destroyed almost a year after the war ended, but I didn't expect to have it rebuilt like this." Was Sandrock the name of his keyblade? Or was it…

"That's the same as Asuka and I," Shinji said. "We used to have to get inside our EVAs to pilot them; they used to be like giant robots, and now they're keyblades."

"Don't be ridiculous," Asuka retorted, turning to Shinji. "They don't have anything like EVAs on this world, or they'd be using them to fight the Heartless instead of needing our help." Asuka'd always liked the fact that the EVAs were special. Quatre seemed puzzled for a moment at Shinji's assertion, but by the time Asuka had finished her counterargument, his expression cleared in comprehension.

"Actually," Quatre said, "we did. They were called mobile suits here, but they weren't magical, and anyone who had training could pilot them. It was only the Gundams that were special, but those – along with all the other mobile suits – were destroyed after the war." So Shinji _was_ right; that was reassuring because Quatre seemed like he was a good person. Quatre looked at his keyblade one more time, before dismissing it. "Sandrock was my Gundam, but I suppose it's now my keyblade." He smiled at Shinji and the others. "We met so that I could help you, I'm sure of it. Please let me help you in your quest."

"I think I speak for all of us," Kairi responded, beaming, "when I say that we'd be glad to have you join us."

"Yeah," Sora agreed, and Riku nodded as well. Asuka didn't say anything, but she looked thoughtful and didn't appear to be against the idea. "Should we talk to that commander of yours next?"

"I think that's a good idea," Quatre started. "If we can explain to Une what's going on, we can work together to stop the Heartless here as soon as possible." Then, he turned to Kairi once more. "Am I the only person you came here looking for on this world, or are there other people we should try and find on our way as well?"

"There are," Kairi said. "There's one other keybearer on this world, and there's also…" she paused for a moment, "It might sound strange, but we're also looking for a teddy bear." A teddy bear… Shinji had seen something like that recently, he knew, but he couldn't remember exactly where. Quatre, however, must have known exactly what she was talking about, because he suddenly had a very surprised expression.

"Actually, I think I know which bear you're looking for," he replied, "and with any luck, it's still in the same building as Commander Une."

"Then let's get going," Riku said.

After a video-phone call in which Quatre had made some arrangements regarding his business schedule with some exasperated – though also curiously resigned – man and had picked up a duffel bag he kept in the building for just these sorts of situations, they all walked back to the space port. When they got to the area where their ship was docked, the uniformed man in charge of registration became flustered again.

"M-Mr. Winner!" The man gave a short, awkward bow. "What a surprise to see you here! If you had called in advance, we would have your private shuttle ready by now!" Quatre had a private shuttle?

"It's alright," Quatre responded, looking concerned at the other man's anxiety. "You don't have to go through the trouble. I'm traveling on their shuttle today." He gestured at Sora, Riku, and Kairi, and the uniformed man nearly had another fit.

"Y-Yes, of course, sir. We'll start the departure procedure right away." Quatre looked curiously at the ship, and then at Sora, but apparently decided not to say anything just yet. It was probably because of the man in charge of registration.

"I _told_ you they were with the Preventers," the worker they'd seen earlier whispered again.

"_Quiet_, man," his companion replied.

"Let's get onboard," Quatre said, wincing. They did so, and as the hatch shut behind them, Quatre sighed in relief.

"Do people do that a lot here?" Sora asked hesitantly.

"Winner Enterprises is very prolific," Quatre sighed, "so the press likes to snoop. One of them found out I work for Preventers sometimes, so it just makes me seem more imposing in the eyes of the public. My role in the war and my association with the Gundams, though, is thankfully still a secret." For all that Quatre claimed his business was popular, Shinji never got the impression that Quatre was as scary as those men on the colony thought he was. He was a fighter, yes, and probably a very capable one, but he didn't seem like the type to abuse his power or let any of his accomplishments go to his head; if anything, it all just seemed to embarrass him.

"Well, you can get some peace and quiet at least until we get to where the Preventers are," Sora responded, which seemed to cheer Quatre up a little. "Where exactly are we going, anyway? I need to put the coordinates into the navigation computer."

"The Preventers headquarters," Quatre said. "Their home base is on the moon. I'll help show you where it is."

"Sure," Sora said. "Just leave your bag on one of the empty bunks in the sleeping area over there, and we can get started." Quatre looked towards the hatch Sora pointed to, walked through, and then walked out again.

"It's… bigger on the inside," Quatre commented, blinking.

"Magic," Sora grinned, and then they went into the piloting area.

The flight to the Preventers base on the moon went without incident, and everyone took the opportunity to learn from Quatre a little more about the world. Apparently, there were four other space colony areas just like the one they'd left, and the Eve Wars Quatre had briefly talked about, with the robots called mobile suits and Gundams, had culminated in the colonies fighting against the Earth. There had been losses on both sides, but peace had thankfully arrived some years ago, and not without the help of Quatre and four other Gundam pilots.

"All five of us are at least partially employed by Preventers now," Quatre said, "but only Heero and Wufei are full-time agents. Luckily, they're both at main HQ instead of on missions right now, and when I contacted Une on the vidphone, she said they'd be there for the meeting, too." The ship's actual arrival on the Preventers base was much less stressful, and the men who helped them dock had a noticeably larger degree of professionalism. It had been a strange concept to actually land on the moon itself, but once they were in the base, Preventers HQ seemed normal, as far as government buildings went. After they'd checked in with one the employees at a front desk, Quatre had tried, to get their "Plevels" changed from green to a different color, not without considerable effort, but certainly without much success.

"You'll have to get authorization from Commander Une herself for that," the man at the desk repeated. "You can wait until your meeting to arrange that." Quatre sighed, and then turned back to the rest of the group. It seemed that bureaucracy was still alive and well, no matter _how_ futuristic the world.

"It's alright," Sora said. "You can still bring us to the meeting, right?" Quatre nodded, and then they started walking to wherever Commander Une was. Quatre seemed to know, and while they were stopped a few times by security, Quatre's ID card managed to get them through alright. Once they'd arrived in the meeting room, they were greeted by three people. One of them, a woman in a business suit with shoulder-length brown hair and a serious expression, was probably Commander Une. The other two Preventers were younger, about Quatre's age. One of them was a man with messy brown hair and blue eyes, and the other had black hair tied back in a low ponytail and dark eyes.

"Quatre," the woman said.

"Commander Une," Quatre replied, inclining his head slightly.

"I have to say," Une said, "that I was surprised when I got that call from you, especially when it was regarding this new… situation." She said "situation" in the same manner one would refer to "cockroaches", which Shinji thought was probably accurate enough. "But I suppose these new acquaintances of yours will explain what's been going on."

"Right," Quatre answered, and introduced Shinji and the others to Commander Une and her two subordinates. Then, the two men introduced themselves.

"Heero Yuy," the brown-haired man said, matter-of-factly. He seemed as if he was analyzing them all, but as to what he was trying to discover, Shinji had no idea.

"Chang Wufei," the other said, brisk, as if he was eager to start the discussion. These were two of the other Gundam pilots Quatre had mentioned. Shinji and Asuka had been pilots, along with Quatre, and since Kairi said there was one other keybearer on this world… Shinji wondered which of these two men were the next keybearer, or if it was one of the other two pilots Quatre had mentioned instead that Shinji had not yet met.

"Let's sit down," Une suggested, and they did so. She began to explain, in greater detail than Quatre had guessed, exactly what the problem was. "I would say that they were a new type of mobile suit, since that is what their appearance suggests, but they are nothing of the sort. They behave like mobile dolls," Quatre frowned deeply at this, and his expression was echoed, albeit a little subtler, in Heero and Wufei's faces, "and so that could explain their smaller scale, but their formations are more _swarms_ than anything else. We've been trying to contain them as unobtrusively as possible, and have had to use traditional ballistics in lieu of mobile suits, but it takes a lot of time and firepower, and their numbers don't seem to be dwindling in the slightest. The reports of their behavior towards agents or civilians that have been captured and overpowered by them are… worrisome." She seemed highly uncomfortable. "We don't want to alert the public and cause a panic, but unless there's another way of fighting them, that's what going to end up happening." She seemed aware that her guests were not surprised by her statements, and finished, closing her mouth with her lips in a thin line.

"That's partially why we've arrived," Riku replied. "Those creatures are called the Heartless." He explained to Une, Heero, and Wufei an overview of what the Heartless were and about their constant pursuit of the hearts of people and worlds, and about the Keyblade wielders' task to defeat them. Their expressions turned even grimmer, if that was possible. "If there are this many Heartless on your world," Riku continued, "then that means someone's probably controlling them. Do you have any idea of who might want to fight the Preventers?" Une looked hesitant.

"There _have_ been reports, but…" She glanced at Wufei, as if expecting him to furnish the rest of the information.

"An organization made of some of the remnants of White Fang," Wufei continued for Une, who looked grateful, "led by someone believed to be associated with Treize Kushrenada." Quatre gasped. That name had come up in Quatre's discussion of the Eve Wars, as the man in charge of the Earth's forces, but it also seemed to be a sensitive subject for both Une and Wufei. "Due to Commander Une's history, leadership of the investigation for both the White Fang remnants and the… Heartless," he was still sounding out the name, and said it with a bit of disgust, "has been transferred to the base in Brussels, which is closest to where they've been able to pinpoint the enemy. Commander Une can make you temporary agents, and it's possible for Heero and I to take you to Brussels to search for more information, but I can't guarantee the Brussels base will be willing to divulge any of it." All three of the Preventers still seemed tense.

"That's not everything, is it?" Quatre asked, evidently reading into Wufei's information in a way the others couldn't. Wufei didn't reply. "Where's the enemy suspected to be?"

"Sanc Kingdom," Heero said, suddenly, staring at Quatre, whose eyebrows raised to disappear into his bangs. "Now, _you_ tell us about the rest of _your_ friends' mission. Why else are these people here, if the Heartless is only part of the problem?"

"Heero," Quatre started, apparently trying to dispel the suspicion that had risen up in his friend, "this might seem sudden, but…" Heero didn't seem reassured in the slightest, "…we're going to need to borrow your teddy bear." Une and Wufei's gazes went to Heero. Heero's eyes, sharp and blue, glared at Quatre.

"That's Relena's bear," he said, as if it were an automatic reaction.

"Yes, I know, but-"

"It's _Relena's_," Heero repeated. "I'm just keeping it until she comes back." Quatre's face fell. Where had this Relena person gone? Heero seemed very protective of this bear, but if they couldn't use it, what would happen to the ocean in Tokyo-3?

"Heero," Quatre said, still trying to coax a more reasonable tone out of Heero, "I know her case hasn't been officially closed yet, but it's been a few years since-"

"_Quatre_." Shinji was suddenly reminded of Quatre's story about Heero being one of the most dangerous pilots and soldiers in the previous war. But while Quatre seemed to have been stopped by that particular tone of voice, Sora had glanced to Kairi, who nodded, and then picked up where Quatre had left off.

"Heero," Sora said calmly, "we can use the bear to help find where she is." Heero's anger at Quatre vanished, and now, he focused intently on Sora, and some rapid, silent conversation passed between the two of them silently.

"You're sure?" Heero asked, completely unreadable.

"Yes." And Sora was just as immovable.

"Fine. Let's go." Then, Heero simply stood up and walked out of the room. Quatre seemed half confused and half concerned about this, and stood up to follow him, but Wufei gave an amused sound that stopped Quatre.

"Don't bother," Wufei said, "he's just packing." Quatre visibly relaxed and laughed. "And since I doubt Brussels is going to tell us anything, I'll just go with you as well to fill you in on the details without having to illegally copy classified government documents."

"Permission granted, Agent Chang," Une said, now amused as well. "Thanks for asking." Wufei simply raised an eyebrow at her. "But there had better be a damn good report on my desk when this is over, and you're _not_ going to send a copy to Brussels. Understood?" Wufei nodded. "Now go get your gear together, or Heero'll get impatient." There was another amused nod from Wufei, and then he walked out of the room as well. Une turned to the rest of them. "Quatre told me your ID cards are useless, so let me change that while those two are arming themselves to the teeth." A whirlwind twenty minutes later, their Plevels had been upgraded to "black", Une had wished them luck and bid them adieu, and they were back at the ship, where Heero and Wufei were waiting for them.

"That's a small ship," Heero said, apparently in a better mood, though still incredibly serious. "What model is it?"

"It's a Gummi ship," Sora responded, grinning. Heero looked confused. "You'll see." Once they'd got the authorization from the docking authorities, they began to pile into the ship.

"It's like a clown car," Wufei said, and Quatre laughed again.

"Wait until you see the inside," Quatre responded. Once they were all inside, Heero and Wufei had the reaction that Shinji thought everyone who got in that ship for the first time had.

"It's bigger on the inside," Wufei blinked.

"Could someone tell us where Brussels is?" Riku asked, glancing at the two new travelers. "We need to put stuff in the navigation computer still."

"How many laws of physics is this ship breaking?" Wufei continued, somewhat dumbfounded.

"I'll help with navigation," Quatre told Riku. Kairi tapped Wufei on the shoulder, who finally stopped pondering physics to look at her.

"I'll show you where you can put your things," she said. Heero and Wufei followed her into the sleeping quarters, and Shinji, still curious about these two other pilots, followed as well. Kairi showed Heero and Wufei the final two empty bunks before turning back to pass Shinji, smiling at him as she did so. One of the first things Heero took out of his duffel bag was a brown, stuffed bear. Again, Shinji thought that he'd seen a teddy bear of some sort before; while he was trying to figure it out, he saw Heero place it at the foot of his bunk with the utmost care and delicacy, holding onto it just a moment more than was necessary. Inexplicably feeling as if he was intruding on something, Shinji turned back to the front of the ship to let them unpack the rest of their things in privacy.


	9. Chapter 7

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** Many thanks to my two lovely betas, wayya and cozzybob. This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very_ long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _least_ KH1 and KH2. Familiarity with Gundam Wing is not necessary, either, but it helps. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>Awakenings<strong>  
><strong>~Chapter 7~<strong>  
><strong>. <strong>

While they were traveling to Brussels, everyone went over all the information that had been collected. Sora and Kairi introduced Roxas and Naminé, to the surprise of Heero and Wufei, and Roxas and Naminé had in turn explained about the search to find the Awakened.

"So you think Relena is one of the people you'd been searching for?" Heero asked. Naminé nodded. "How are we going to be able to find her when she's been missing for years? And how is the bear going to help?"

"When you have an object that's important to the person," Naminé said, "it resonates with their heart, and the connection between both parts are easier to see. It's normally very hard for this connection to join back up by itself, but the keyblades make that easier, and being in a place that's important to the person makes it easier as well." And while Naminé again gave the impression of glossing over details, she did seem to be the most knowledgeable regarding this subject.

"Then we should have skipped going to Brussels and go straight to Sanc," Heero said. "Brussels isn't going to give us details anyway, and the Sanc Kingdom is very important to Relena." Shinji noticed how determined Heero was to stay in the present tense, even though the description of the Awakened was of someone that had lost their heart and separated into two different people.

"They might not have told Une," Wufei started, "but I can still try to-"

"No," Heero said, firm. "Relena and the Heartless will be in Sanc."

"Are you sure?" Naminé asked.

"Yes." Heero's voice didn't leave room for argument, though from the impressions he'd been giving off, Shinji didn't imagine that it often did. Naminé turned to Riku and Quatre.

"Then we should change our destination to the Sanc Kingdom," she said.

"Right," Riku nodded, and he and Quatre went to go adjust the navigation.

"When they get back," Heero said, "there's something I think you should see. I'll set it up now." He went back towards the sleeping area, then returned with a laptop computer, one that looked much slimmer and sleeker than any Shinji had ever seen before. After some furious typing, he turned the machine around and placed it on a table, where everyone could see the screen. When Riku and Quatre returned a little after from adjusting the ship's course, Heero started explaining.

"In June of AC196," He said, "Relena was kidnapped, for unknown reasons. There was no explanation, no obvious motive, and no one came forward to demand a ransom or to negotiate for her return. This video is the only evidence that was ever recovered to give any sort of clue as to what might have happened to her." This was all stated as if Heero had been reciting something said many times. "Now that we've heard the story of the Heartless, I think some questions will be answered." Then, he started the video.

The video showed a well-furnished room, a sort of office, with a desk and computer, some chairs, a few potted plants, and a thick, Persian rug. There was a window on the left side of the room which indicated that the office was on the second or third story of the building, and the view outside the window was the more natural climate of the Earth, as opposed to one of the space colonies. The only other way into the room, other than the window, was the one door on the right side of the room. At the desk was a girl, just a little older than Shinji, dressed in a business suit, with her sandy-blonde hair tied back with a black bow; she was calmly working on some papers on her desk, and would glance at the computer screen every so often, as if checking a fact or figure, her bangs moving slightly with the movement of her head. It was only then that Shinji realized that this girl, whose name Heero had said was Relena, was the same girl that Shinji had seen once before. He had seen the bear, too, before, but he hadn't made the connection until just now; Relena was one of the girls on that final stained-glass panel Shinji had fought on, when he'd first received his keyblade. But if Relena was one of the girls, then who had that _other_ blonde girl been?

Shinji's train of thought was interrupted, however, when the peaceful monotony of Relena and whatever she was working on was herself interrupted, and in the most chilling way. From seemingly out of nowhere, there was a sound like the air rushing out of a room – had Relena actually been on a colony, after all? – and a long-haired man in a black cloak simply _appeared_ from the near wall. Relena's head snapped up from the papers she was working on, and a horrified expression crossed her face. Those watching the video were just as surprised, and Shinji heard Kairi, who had apparently switched places with Naminé again, inhale sharply.

"That's Xigbar," Roxas said, half-surprised, half-angry.

"Who?" Heero demanded.

"The Organization. I'll explain later."

"Who are you?" Relena-in-the-video demanded, standing up at once and causing her chair to topple behind her. Her voice was forceful, and while it was plain that she was startled, and not without some fear at finding an intruder suddenly in her office, she was surprisingly calm and trying to cope with the crisis without becoming panicked. The man who had appeared, Xigbar, only chuckled at her.

"Sorry, but you don't get to find that out… not yet, at least," Xigbar responded, in a lazy, drawling accent. "Superior said no fooling around on this mission, strictly get-in-say-hello-say-goodbye-and-get-out. 'Course, we'll have time for chitchat later." He laughed again. "Oh, one more thing, first." Xigbar turned to look at the camera, revealing a heavily-scarred face and an eyepatch, and then raised one of his arms, which seemed to suddenly be holding some strange sort of gun. "No snooping." He shot something at the camera, which turned staticky and started to garble the sound. While he was doing this, Relena had been frantically searching her desk for something, presumably to fight back with, but all that turned up was a letter-opener.

"If you think…" Relena's response – and the view of the room – was cutting in and out, due to the damage to the camera, "…to just…my history…wrong." She simply brandished the letter-opener in one of her hands at first, but in the next shot, she seemed to have tried throwing it at Xigbar. Unfortunately, she must have missed, or he hadn't been damaged by it, because the next time the video was clear enough to see, he had started to advance towards her, and she was backed up against the wall. Dark puddles had also appeared on the floor, and soon enough, black blobs that were probably Heartless started crawling out of them. Relena tried to make a dash for the door, but Xigbar flicked a hand, and then the Heartless were blocking her way.

"Now, don't…" Xigbar said, calm drawling, and almost amused, "…gotta…my mission. It won't…" the Heartless advanced closer, "…well, maybe…little." Then two of the creatures pounced, and while Relena tried to dodge, she wasn't a match for them and was knocked to the ground. She was no longer visible in the frame of the video, but from the sounds Shinji could pick apart between the static, it seemed that the Heartless held her there, apparently under Xigbar's orders, while he continued talking. "…procedure…bonus if…nobody." The video which had been growing increasingly staticky, was almost completely obscured, and the sound wasn't much better, but that didn't make it any easier to watch. Asuka, sitting next to him with shallower-than-normal breathing, was also very tense, as were Riku and Kairi, who were now surreptitiously holding hands; Roxas just seemed angry, and while Heero and Wufei's faces were carefully constructed as to remain unreadable, Quatre was the only one who was as visibly saddened by it all as Shinji felt.

There was a bit of unintelligible speech from Xigbar, what sounded like part of a scream from Relena, and then dead silence interspersed with static. What was the most shocking was that when the next piece of static cleared, both Relena and the Heartless were completely gone. Only Xigbar remained, and he seemed, of all things, annoyed.

"Her Heartless…sub-par info…waste of…" He flicked his hand again, and another air-sucking sound arose from the near wall. "…check for…in case." And then he walked towards the wall and disappeared. After another ten seconds of silence, both in the video and in the people who were watching it in the present, the tape ended. Then, Heero turned to Roxas, face still unreadable.

"Relena was attacked by the Heartless," he said. "Who's Xigbar, what's the Organization, and why would they do something like that?" _And how can I utterly destroy them?_ was the unspoken second half of that question. Riku seemed like he was going to answer the question, but Roxas stopped him.

"The Organization, Organization XIII," Roxas responded, "was a group of Nobodies. Xigbar and the rest of the Organization were defeated, and faded into darkness." He neglected to mention that he was the sole survivor of the Organization, but Shinji thought it was probably a good idea, at least right now, since Heero would probably react negatively to that information. Roxas described how Nobodies were born, and that the goal of the Organization was to get their hearts back. "But because the Organization needed a supply of hearts and Heartless, they'd sometimes go and look for people with strong hearts, to make Heartless out of, and if the person was really strong, they would make a Nobody, too. That's probably why Xigbar went looking for Relena: for the Heartless, and the leftover Nobody, if she made one." Heero took in all this information in silence, but Quatre picked up the line of questioning where Heero had left off.

"Xigbar didn't seem satisfied with whatever Heartless Relena made, though," Quatre pointed out.

"That's right," Roxas responded, contemplative.

"The more darkness a person has when they get their heart taken," Riku said, "the stronger the Heartless will be." Roxas glanced at Riku, but didn't object to the additional information. "If Relena's Heartless was weak, it means she didn't have very much darkness in her heart."

"She was famous for being a pacifist," Wufei said. "If Xigbar had known anything about her at all, he should've known there wasn't a point in trying to make a Heartless."

"But if she had a strong heart and will," Roxas said, picking back up from Riku, "then she would've made a powerful Nobody. All the Nobodies were a part of the Organization."

"All of them?" Heero asked, picking up Roxas's admission easily.

"None of us were given any other choice," was all Roxas said, a little defensively. "And if you tried to leave, they just hunted you down."

"If Relena is one of the Awakened," Riku said, before Heero had a chance to respond to Roxas's statement, "then her heart being taken from her created a Nobody as well as a Heartless." It was a little strange that while Riku and Roxas didn't seem to get along as well as Riku and Sora did, Riku still immediately defended Roxas from Heero, even if it was in a subtle way; maybe it was because of Sora? Roxas looked somewhere between annoyed and grateful for it, which Shinji didn't really understand, either. But whatever the reason, it was probably none of Shinji's business, so he tried to focus on the conversation again. Heero seemed to silently acknowledge this as well, because he turned his focus from the Organization back to Relena.

"But if we go to Sanc," Heero said, "then we can put Relena and her Nobody back together?"

"That's right," Roxas said.

"Alright," Heero replied, and then moved to take his laptop from the room again.

"I think we'll be there within the hour, anyway," Riku added, then turned to Quatre again. "Are we going to have to go through any sort of customs again?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go figure that out," Riku said. Then, to Roxas, "we should take it off autopilot and put it back in manual." Roxas switched back to Sora, who nodded, and then the three of them went to the cockpit. That left Shinji in the main cabin with Asuka, Kairi, and Wufei. After the tension of the video and the following conversation, now it was just awkward silence. Kairi seemed to pick up on this right away, and immediately worked to dispel it.

"Wufei," she said, "is there any sort of information we should know about Sanc Kingdom before we land?"

"Yes," Wufei answered, apparently relieved to find something to talk about. "Let me fill you in." Shinji was glad, too, that there was something to talk about besides the Heartless. "Sanc Kingdom was led by the Peacecraft royal family as a country of total pacifism, but King Peacecraft was killed years before the war, and the kingdom was dissolved. It was only during the war that Relena rebuilt Sanc, and began to spread the message of total pacifism once again." He frowned, and his tone grew increasingly sober as he continued. "But the Romafeller Foundation, one of the powers behind the war, was threatened by Relena's message and destroyed the kingdom a second time. After the war, Relena declined to rule Sanc as a monarch again, and instead began to work in politics as an elected official. Sanc Kingdom itself was very hard-hit during the war, and is still recovering. A few elected officials have been appointed to lead the different areas of Sanc, but the royal family's palace is essentially a ruin that's cut off from public access, and the country as a whole doesn't even exist anymore."

"The palace ruins…" Asuka started. Wufei caught her eye and nodded.

"The most likely location of the resistance in Sanc," he said, "is the ruins of the royal palace. The nearest spaceport is a little while away, but it shouldn't take too long to get to the palace from there." During the remainder of the flight, Wufei, Heero, and Quatre discussed strategy with Riku, Sora, and Asuka, while Shinji joined Kairi in the cockpit. Kairi did all the piloting for the rest of the flight, but Shinji would help by pushing buttons, adjusting dials, or reading figures, whatever Kairi seemed to think was necessary. They halted, however, just as when the ship had first approached the L4 Colony, by a man demanding clearance.

"This area is currently restricted to civilians," the man said. His uniform indicated that he was with the Preventers.

"We sent you the security clearances once we arrived over Sanc airspace," Kairi responded.

"This area is restricted," the man repeated. "You do not have clearance here. Please leave."

"Shinji," Kairi said, still calm, "send them the codes again. That panel right there." She indicated which panel Shinji should operate, and he sent another copy of the codes Commander Une had given them to the spaceport. The man glanced down at them, then back up again, frowning.

"Only Plevels Black or Violet may enter this area. Those codes do not give you clearance to land," the man said. "Please turn around, or we will have to retaliate."

"Shinji," Kairi's voice was low, but her face was stubborn, "Go get Wufei. Quickly."

"Right." He turned and started running toward the hatch.

"Fire a warning shot," the Preventer officer from the space port said, and Kairi was forced to dodge, tilting the ship sharply. Shinji held a hand out to steady himself, then wrenched the hatch open, entering the lounge and planning area just as Riku, Sora, and Heero ran into it from the other side.

"What's going on?" Sora asked sharply. The ship tilted again, but thankfully righted itself immediately after.

"They won't let us land," Shinji said. "They won't accept the code we got from Commander Une, so-" He had to dodge as Riku and Sora simply ran past him to the cockpit. Heero, however, at least waited to hear the end of his sentence, and by that time, the others had piled into the lounge as well. "-Kairi said we need Wufei to give them a different code."

"Ballistic bureaucracy," Quatre said, annoyed. Wufei said something under his breath that was probably very rude, if Quatre's reaction was any indication, and then he stormed past Shinji as well, Heero following right after. Not really knowing what else to do, Shinji followed as well.

The cockpit was a little crowded, now that there were six people in it. Sora had switched places with Kairi at the helm, and Riku was currently arguing with the Preventer at the spaceport.

"…are _obviously_ of the correct PLevel," Riku was saying. "These codes were authorized by Commander Une _herself_."

"We've said this multiple times," the Preventer responded, "but those codes do not have proper authorization."

"Then I'll send you mine," Wufei said, and typed something furiously into the computer. The Preventer looked at his monitor apathetically for a moment before returning his gaze to the screen.

"I'm sorry, Agent Chang," he said, "but you cannot land here. I was given very specific orders as to which bases were to be authorized clearance, and Serenitatis base is not among them. If you do not leave this airspace at once, we will be required to fire more than just a mere warning shot." Wufei bristled.

"If Brussels base is so imbecilic as to think that Commander Une-" Wufei started, but was quickly interrupted by Heero.

"Then give them the other code," Heero said. The Preventer at the spaceport only seemed mildly interested, but Wufei stopped in his tracks. "We are _going_ to land, and I'd rather not have to do it the other way." Heero meant by force, didn't he? Wufei seemed displeased by this, and he didn't need to voice that opinion aloud, either.

"You have fifteen seconds," the Preventer said.

"_That_ code is only for-" Wufei started.

"Twelve seconds, eleven…"

"I can't think of a better time to use it," Heero retorted. Then, as the Preventer counted down further, "If _you_ don't, then _I_ will." Heero's gaze was stony, and Shinji thought that everyone else must have been holding their breaths as well.

"Fine," Wufei ground out, and Heero's fingers raced over the keys. "But _you're_ dealing with it afterwards." Whatever that other code was must have been something even more impressive than the one Lady Une had given them, because the face of the Preventer at the spaceport turned deathly pale.

"We _will_ land," Heero said, glaring at the video monitor. "Immediately."

"Yes," the Preventer said, finally. Shinji breathed a sigh of relief, and he was pretty sure he wasn't the only one to do so. Shortly after, when they'd docked and Heero had made sure the Preventers stayed out of their hair, Shinji breathed again, but this time it was not air recycled or manufactured in a ship, colony, or moon base; it was the fresh, cool air of the Sanc Kingdom on Earth.

* * *

><p><strong>AN 2:** This was actually supposed to be posted a while ago, but the document uploader was having problems. And then I forgot I hadn't posted it when I went to upload the newest chapter, so, uh... here it is, guys n_n'


	10. Chapter 8

**Title: Awakenings**  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Shinji, Roxas, Quatre, ensemble. Various yaoi and het pairings.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Post-KH2. Crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gundam Wing, and FF7: Advent Children; familiarity with all source media is not necessary. Post-End of Evangelion, anime timeline, but with some elements from the manga. Post-series Gundam Wing, no-movie AU. When Shinji Ikari met the three strange teens with mysterious weapons called Keyblades, he didn't expect that he would be able to wield one as well, nor did he expect to be taken on a journey to various worlds, stopping the threat of the Heartless and finding the Awakened. For a boy who only wants to be at peace, how will he deal with this strange new set of circumstances? When the threads of the past interweave with the events of the present, what future will he make?  
><strong>AN:** This idea has been rolling around in my head for a _very _long time. This is the Kingdom Hearts universe told from an outsider's point of view, so familiarity with the games is not necessary, although there will be spoilers for at _ least _KH1 and KH2. Familiarity with Gundam Wing is not necessary, either, but it helps. This entire fic was plotted out before BBS or Coded came out in Japan.

* * *

><p><strong>.<strong>  
><strong>Awakenings<strong>  
><strong>~Chapter 8~<strong>  
><strong>. <strong>

It wasn't long before they encountered more Preventers, but thankfully, these ones let them advance towards the palace with much less protestation. Either it was due to Heero, Wufei, and Quatre wearing their Preventer jackets as well, or the Preventers at the spaceport had sent a message ahead, but these Preventers were completely deferential to those three. A few of them had looked askance at the others because no one had their keyblades out yet, especially Kairi and Asuka, but Quatre had managed to wave them off with a smile and a mention of a classified mission. After that, Shinji and the rest were simply bid good luck as they continued on their way. They'd only been walking for ten minutes, however, when Riku suddenly stopped in his tracks and summoned his keyblade into his hand.

"They're close," he said, and Sora and Kairi nodded, summoning their keyblades as well. Shinji, who'd been walking near Riku, couldn't see any Heartless, but figured that Riku probably knew what he was talking about and called Hedgehog's Dilemma to his hand. From the other end of the group, closer to where Sora and Kairi were, he saw Asuka do the same with her keyblade and Wufei with what looked like a semiautomatic.

"How can you tell?" Heero, who was on the other side of Riku, asked. He had a smaller gun in his hand, and was looking around, frowning, but didn't seem to be able to find the Heartless. Quatre, on Shinji's other side with his keyblade out as well, seemed to be looking for them also.

"I can smell them," Riku replied, looking in a particular direction slightly off to his left.

"…_Smell_them?" Quatre asked, slightly concerned.

"It's a thing," Riku said, and didn't elaborate because at that moment, two groups of Heartless rushed out and them, one from the stand of trees Riku had been looking at and another closer towards the other end of the group.

If Shinji hadn't known any better, the Heartless on this world seemed like some type of robot to him. Ranging from four to five feet, some flying and some remaining on the ground, they had blocky limbs, and in tones of brown and green and gray, something like a cross between something used for military surveillance and a mecha cartoon. The cockpit area had a symbol like a black heart covered in red vines on the front, and there was that same dulled, golden glow coming from the eyes peeking out of the armored helms. Those eyes had fixated on all the humans, and the Heartless began running and flying towards them. Heero, who had already begun firing at them, made a frustrated noise at the lack of effect his bullets seemed to be having, and backed up slightly.

"Were you planning on telling us about them _before_ or _after_they started trying to surround us?" Heero asked Riku.

"We haven't been on this world before," Riku shot back, as their half of the group spread out a little, to give enough room to both swing the keyblades and give Heero some range, for the time being at least. "They're harder to pinpoint if they're a new type. I hope you brought a bigger gun with you." He was probably referring to the fact that Heero was digging with his free hand through the duffel bag on his back. It was only a second or two before Heero took out a gun that was indeed bigger, and comfortably closer to the size of the one Wufei was using at the other end.

"This big enough?" Heero asked, and fired a few rounds into one of the Heartless, which made it stumble back, dazed, and also had the secondary effect of making Quatre chuckle.

"It's a start," Riku replied, smirking. But a start was apparently not enough; while Heero's shots stunned the Heartless and made it easier for Shinji, Riku, or Quatre to finish them off, the Heartless didn't seem to be suffering much permanent damage from them. The others couldn't be everywhere at once, either, and when one of the blocky, mechanical Heartless jetted too close to Heero, he was forced to try and hit it with the butt of the gun. But instead of another partially-dazed Heartless or unfortunately-injured Heero, there was a bright flash of light, one that meant only one thing. The Heartless stumbled back from it, and when the spots left Shinji's vision, Heero's gun was gone, and in its place was a keyblade.

"What about this one?" Heero asked. Much like Heero himself, the keyblade was simple, forceful, and very effective. The shaft was some sort of glowing, green beam, and the silver-gray teeth were like the barrels of two giant cannons. The hand-guards were two simple, red curves, and at the end of the chain was single, white feather. Heero swung his keyblade at a Heartless, and there was a very satisfying noise that sounded similar to metal being crumpled.

"Much better," Riku said, looking very pleased. Sora and Kairi, at the other end of the battle, noticed what was going on with Heero and high-fived each other. Riding on the enthusiasm of another powerful fighter, Asuka let loose a fireball from her keyblade, which burnt one of the Heartless she was fighting into a puff of black smoke. Now that the flash from Heero's keyblade's first appearance had died down, Shinji's group dove back into the battle against the Heartless.

"Was yours a robot, too?" Shinji asked, as they fought, then corrected himself. "Mobile suit, I mean."

"Wing," was all Heero said in response, which Shinji figured meant yes. He saw Quatre turn to look at Heero.

"…_Just_Wing," Quatre asked, somewhat hesitantly, "or…?"

"Just Wing," Heero reassured him, and it was obvious that it was a reassurance because Quatre looked much less worried, now that Heero had clarified that point for him. "No ZERO." A pause, then, "It feels better that way."

"What's ZERO?" Riku asked. His tone of voice was deliberately casual, but when Shinji looked at his face, it was obvious that Riku was suddenly very interested. Heero and Quatre shared a look, and then Heero began speaking.

"ZERO System was a program," he said, "that was put into some of the mobile suits during the Eve Wars, including a few of the Gundams." Heero's face was deadly serious, and he swung his keyblade forcefully at one of the Heartless. "It was designed to transmit battle data directly to your consciousness, and made you faster, able to calculate and strategize better. But it messed up your head." Then, Heero turned his full attention back to the Heartless, apparently having said all he thought was necessary. Quatre was frowning too, now, and he was sorrowful as he continued where Heero had left off.

"It made you think that everyone was an enemy," Quatre explained. "You were faster and smarter and more powerful, but the same restraints that had held those things back were also what kept you from getting out of control. You'd just go berserk and try to destroy everything." He kept talking, but turned as he was fighting to face away from Riku and Heero; only Shinji caught a glimpse of some kind of immense sorrow emanating from Quatre. "Lots of people lost their lives because of it, whole colonies even." Heero, apparently aware of this sorrow nonetheless, picked up again when it was Quatre's turn to fall silent.

"Some of us ended up using it, but it was only near the end of the war that it actually became effective." He continued attacking the Heartless, whose numbers looked like they were finally beginning to dwindle, but his strikes were calmer and more efficient, forceful only as much as they needed to be. "I could use it to fight on my own, and Quatre could strategize and direct with it, but I don't think any of us were able to master it fully. It was necessary to end the war, but it's better now that we don't have to." They _did_look like they felt better; even Shinji could tell that.

"I see," was all Riku said in response, looking at Heero carefully. Shinji didn't really blame him; he wasn't sure what could be said about a system that sounded so dangerous. It sounded a little like when the EVA had gone berserk, and that had been terrifying.

"Do you?" Heero responded. It was both like and not like their banter from earlier: some type of challenge, but this time with much higher stakes.

"Was it something like this?" Riku asked, and then pulled his left arm back sharply, from the elbow, then shot it forward, a large, blue-black ball of fire whizzing past Heero to slam into the remaining few Heartless and incinerate them in mere moments.

"Yes," Heero said, after a few moments of silence, nostrils flaring from the grayish smoke left in the wake of the fireball. The smoke from Riku's attack was the same color as the smoke left behind when a Heartless was defeated. "You can control it fully?"

"It's only partially about control," Riku responded, cryptically. "It's also about what you're protecting with it." There was another moment of silence in which Heero and Riku looked at each other, and then Heero, of all reactions, let out a short laugh.

"Right," Heero said. Riku nodded at him, and then turned back to Shinji and Quatre.

"Let's finish," he said, then turned and dashed over to where Sora, Kairi, Asuka, and Wufei were finishing up the last of the Heartless on their side. By the time Shinji had gotten there himself, along with Heero and Quatre, all the Heartless were defeated. Wufei nodded at Heero and Quatre.

"You can have the rest of my ammo," Heero said, the hint of a smile on his face.

"Good," Wufei responded. "I'm the one that has to write that blasted report for Une afterwards, anyway, and she's going to be picky about details."

"Now," Sora said, grinning, "let's finish getting to the palace." Everyone else was in agreement as well, so the group continued down the road leading towards both the ruins and whoever was controlling these Heartless.

It wasn't long, though, before they ran into more trouble. Their group had just come over a ridge, and Shinji thought he could finally see what looked like a large palace just a little way ahead, large portions of it crumbling and battered by artillery, with the overgrown remains of a garden off to one side. Walking directly inside was impossible, though, because there was another group of Heartless, directly between them and the ruins. Fortunately, there was also a small group of Preventers trying to fight them off, but from the looks of things, they were faring poorly and had begun to fall back. Wufei, apparently still annoyed that the Preventers at the base had taken so long to get around to acknowledging him, went up to the nearest one who was holding some sort of radio and a handgun instead of a larger firearm, and demanded to be briefed on the situation. His tone of voice left no room for argument.

"The hostiles closer to the palace are functioning more cohesively than any of the ones we were fighting before," the Preventer agent said. "We think they may be a new type of compact mobile doll, and we suspect their command center is in the palace, but…" he swallowed and looked nervously at the Heartless, "…they seem to be able to acquire fuel from, uh… biological sources. Frankly, sir, we're just trying not to get eaten." The Preventer seemed to be clinging to as much military jargon as he possibly could, but he was clearly very agitated.

"Reinforcements have arrived," Wufei, said. "Tell your squad to fall back to HQ." The preventer balked.

"Y-You can't just send us away so you can take over!" he spluttered. "There aren't even half as many of you! I'm not going to let a bunch of kids just _waltz_in and-"

"We're not kids," Sora interrupted; his keyblade was now in his hand. Considering that not being _eaten_was a little more important than age in this particular situation, Shinji took out his own keyblade, and by the next time he looked at the others, they all had theirs out as well.

"Reinforcements," Heero repeated, his own keyblade glowing softly, "have arrived. Go back to HQ." The Preventer looked, if it were even possible, even more overwhelmed.

"I… shouldn't ask, should I?"

"No," Heero answered. The Preventer gave a little nod, and then ran off, talking animatedly into his radio. There was a cheer from the rest of the unit, and then they began falling back. The Heartless took this as their cue to attack the people that had remained, who were Shinji and the others. The preventer with the radio had been right about the Heartless' cohesiveness, too; the ones Shinji was fighting now seemed faster, more organized.

"Someone's directly controlling these Heartless," Riku said, "and from the degree of control, they're not very far away."

"From the palace?" Asuka asked.

"No," Riku answered, "closer." As if on that cue, the Heartless who had been fighting them stilled and moved back to form a circle around a dark, swirling portal. Out of the portal stepped a white-haired man in a black leather outfit, but to Shinji's surprise, this was not Loz. Maybe it was one of the "brothers" Loz had mentioned?

"I was hoping you'd show up eventually," the man smiled. He was built much leaner than Loz, and his long, white hair framed his thin face, reaching down his back; in his hands, two ornate, silver revolvers gleamed just as wickedly as his catlike green eyes. "It wouldn't have been any fun at all if one of my brothers had been the one to finish you nuisances off."

"That's not going to happen," Sora retorted as he, Riku, and Kairi slid into their battle stances. The white-haired man laughed.

"What, before any introductions have even been made?" he said. "I have been sent here with a very important message for you, and for this world, from someone very important indeed; it would be rude to attack a messenger before he has finished relaying his message, would it not?"

"What's the message?" Heero asked, voice clipped. Shinji could see his hand tightening its grip on his keyblade. The white-haired man smiled again.

"I, Yazoo, have been sent to relay a message from a _most_important lady." His eyes followed Heero, Quatre, and Wufei as they tensed. "Soon, the whole world will know, but since you people will be dead before she announces it to the Earth and Colonies as a whole, she has deigned it fit to inform you now. As of this very moment, she has claimed the throne of the Sanc Kingdom, and in three days' time, she will arrive at the capital in Brussels to claim the title Queen of the World. It is only proper for her to follow in her father's footsteps and rule as she sees fit." He was clearly enjoying the reactions this produced in his audience, especially from Heero and Wufei.

"Who is it?" Quatre asked, as if he was dreading the answer. Shinji remembered what he had heard about the royalty here; hadn't _Relena_ruled Sanc Kingdom in the past? But Relena had been turned into a Heartless, so that was impossible. He was completely lost.

"Why, I can't believe you don't know," Yazoo smiled. "It's Mariemaia Kushrenada, of course."

"Kushrenada!" Wufei seemed the most shocked of all; did he know who this Mariemaia woman was?

"Yes," Yazoo replied. "Her father, Treize Kushrenada, fought bravely in the war that devastated this country and the world, and strove to bring harmony to the people. But his reign as King of the World was tragically cut short when he was slain by a rebel terrorist, and although the current President and the Preventers _say_ that the war is over, the true peace Treize wished for could not be achieved." Wufei looked so angry, Shinji thought he might attack Yazoo on the spot, but Quatre gave him a look that stopped him from doing so, and although he was seething, Wufei remained where he was. "Mariemaia wants the world to know that she will not be satisfied with this false peace, and that with her ascension to the global stage and its throne, she will remake the world as her father intended." Then Yazoo gave a little bow. "That is the message I have been asked to deliver. Queen Mariemaia will be waiting for you in the palace throne room. Please try to remain alive until then." Then, another dark portal opened up behind him, and as Yazoo stepped backwards into it, the Heartless, who had been held back by his presence, suddenly burst forwards to attack once more, blocking off the portal that was now closed with glowing, golden eyes.


End file.
